I recently filed with a firm (Feb) to negotiate my debt. I was told, after-the-fact that negotiation does not begin until enough money is in my escrow account, although the creditors are notified that this process has begun for me. I was also told that creditors can take me to court but not likely because of the court costs, etc. or if the debt is a substantial amount like $100,000.

After seeing some responses and names of companies in questions on this site, it worries me.

Question - how soon do creditors/their collection agencies take people to court? Is it within 6 months or a year or after a year?

Do creditors accept the negotiation rather than debt management as a way debtors are trying to "make good" on their balances?

Has anyone been through debt negotiation with Campos Chartered Law Firm and have you had good results?

Thanks for any help.

Depressed with Debt

The creditor is under no obligation to accept any settlement on your account.

The time frame can vary a great deal from one company to another as far as when they might assign or sue for the recovery of the debt.

I have heard many horror stories about these debt settlement agencies. Even some of the big ones, like Consumer Credit Counseling have customers that get sued because they did not inform them of accounts that refused to settle.

Other than contacting your creditors yourself to verify that they have accepted a settlement offer, I don't know how you can be assured that things are in order, but, by contacting them yourself, you could open other doors that you may not want opened yet.

Good Luck to you!

Thank you progunr. I hate being in this situation and never planned to be where I am today. But then again, do any of us? After more research, I am finding that all options out there aren't easy. Thanks again.

Of the companies I know of they normally have some arranged agreements with many credit card companies, so there is nothing to negotiate unles they don't have an agreement, and there is no amount that has to go into an escrow account, they send out your money after you send them the money or at lest at the end of each month that you make payments. So this is different than most of the debt firms that I have heard of.

And no, most are sueing for 5000 or more, and many are going to court for even 1000 dollars. Since they have attorneys that work for them full time, often the only cost is to pay a local attorney to appear that one day in court for them. And of course they merely add that to YOUR bill that you owe, so they don't have any problem doing this

Most companies don't do anything for at least 6 months and many even one to two years, some even sell the account and let the other person do the law suit. It will just depend on the company

They are under no obligation to deal, and most would have dealt with you, one perosn I am working with right now the credit card companies that are 6 month old are all offering to settle for 1/2 now. Most doctors do the same. But they don't have to

Never heard of that company but you can let us know.

Remember the companies don't have to do any settle, and if they believe you have a good job and believe they can get their money by going to court they may.

But as you read on here being sued for 500 and more is not uncommom at all.

FThank you Fr_Chuck. I see that being sued for small amounts is common. I feel guilty about what has happened and ashamed. For the most part, I feel I am trying to buy some time because in a year from now, I will have two large debts cleared which will free up a substantial amount of $ that I can put towards my debt if this company doesn't follow through. I did a lot of research and reviewed them on the BBB's sight. I didn't just jump into this but I do wish I would have gotten help with a credit counseling service a year or two ago.
Thanks again for your help.

No reason to be ashamed, we all make errors and/or bad choices and sometimes things just happen.

While you don't know as a new member, those here have tracked my own experience over the last year or so. I had a large company in the state of GA along with large house and several rental houses,
Well the product ( company) I sold for, decided to no longer sell in the state of TN, so I went from large income, to no income in 3 days. I had to watch them pack up my stock and move it out. Well of course I could not make payments on the large home, I was lucky kept it out of forecloruse for almost a year and finally sold it and actually made a little money, and was able to sell all of my rental properties for some profit which game me some money to live on. So I ended up finally at about 1/2 my normal pay. So many of us have been there.
That is why I am working basically two jobs now to try to catch back up still.