Prefiling online credit counseling

[oldrocker]

Wife and I just did ours, the final analysis: "Your situation is generally considered to be one of financial crises. Seek professional legal and financial advice as soon as possible." Well no $hit Sherlock, like I needed to spend $34 and 30 minutes in front of the computer to tell me that.

[lrprn]

Be sure to write your 2005 congress representatives to say thanks for this ridiculous and useless requirement to file. They voted overwhelmingly for this mess of a bk law.

[momof5]

We felt the same way although we had to actually talk to someone on the phone. I was on one and my husband on the other. It was VERY obvious after the first 3 minutes that this was going to be humiliating. The end of our conversation consisted of the gentleman on the phone advising us of how much money we need to make a month to pay our bills. " So make sure when you do find employment that you make at least such and such a month"

OOOOKAY.... like we are not living this and we dont know how much money we need. Did we really need to talk to a complete stranger and look like total losers ( thats what it felt like) ? Was this our punishment for filing BK?
By the time people do this counseling session isnt it quite obvious that they are in financial distress?


How about this one!! We filed May 29th... last week we received 2 postcards..yep you read that right postcards with giant letter.... POST FILING BANKRUPTCY COUNSELING... One even had " We see that you filed for Bankruptcy on MAY 29th" in dark giant letters. Looking for business!! So this all makes sense. Its about $$$$ for these 'credit counseling businesses" We already prepaid for ours and were assigned a place from our attorney so to be getting these solicitations for this just urk me.
Now our mailman knows and I am just hoping one of these little postcards doesnt end up stuck to a neighbors mail.

[PoorGrammyinBK7]

Just did ours Friday - how absolutely ridiculous! A gift for the credit counseling companies and one more "stick it to ya" for people in debt.

For us it was completely irrelevant since we have practically NO credit card debt (less than $1,000) and are filing mainly because of a large judgment (about which we had NO control and could not settle no matter how hard we tried) from a guy who is possibly using us to commit tax fraud.

Our "crime"? Not having enough money to afford a lawyer who could properly defend us.

Yeah this was real helpful....

[Cali]

My counseling wasn't bad at all. The phone call was 45 minutes long and the gent on the other line was nice.

I am doing my last counseling this week with the same company.

[jenopher]

Ours was easy too. It was all online and we had to call them afterwards to briefly speak to someone. The atty includes it in his fee and they send info directly to him. I was kinda hoping there was some magical financial secret I didn't know about yet.

[AngelinaCat]

Our pre-filing counseling wasn't bad--if you ignore the $70.00 it cost ($35.00 per each of us)--that we really couldn't afford. But, oh well. We actually visited with a very nice lady, in person. She actually answered some of our questions and concerns that we couldn’t get the attorney to answer. This person is the one that told us that with our income as it was at the time—his SS, small pension, my full-time, and part-time job incomes—that we would be hard pressed to pay our bills as they were then (July 2007). And that we would be better suited to going Ch. 7, rather than trying for the Ch. 13 we had been planning on. She sent the certificates of completion, all the paperwork, recommendations, to the attorney, who did NOTHING until we finally put our feet down in November. By then I had lost my full-time job, and there was no question but that we would have to go Ch. 7.

Post-filing, we took an hour online course that wasn’t bad, either. We have never been disciplined enough to sit down and make up and FOLLOW a budget. We are trying to form that habit now. The days when we had some money in the wallet or on a card and could dash into a store and buy something on a whim, are now long gone. We have to think carefully about what we do purchase, and when we do it.

[SiftedLikeWheat]

We used CCCS of Atlanta online. For the purpose of obtaining the certificate, it was fairly quick (about and hour) and painless. But as pointed out above, totally pointless and a waste of good money ($50) I could have used for gas and groceries this week. PLEASE CALL AND WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN about the ridiculousness of the 2005 bankruptcy laws. Nothing will change unless you call and complain.