I want to ask you a question that could solve your financial, credit, and debt problems …
But first, a quick story …
One of my friends, Jocelyn, told me that she was in tears for two days.
A mom with Baby #2 on the way, Jocelyn had decided to let go of her nanny …
She told me she felt a little silly crying about it … compared to some people’s problems, letting go of the nanny is hardly a big problem.
But it was a big lifestyle-decision for Jocelyn and her family. You see, the nanny has cared for their daughter since she was four months old. And with Baby #2 on the way, Jocelyn’s family is going to need a nanny again in about four months.
But her daughter just started preschool, and her son isn’t due for about two more months. Once her son is born, Jocelyn won’t be working much during the first few months.
She figured she could save a boatload of money by letting go of the nanny…
But the decision made Jocelyn sob. She was going to have to hire another nanny once she went back to work.
Jocelyn couldn’t image leaving her new child alone with a stranger. The thought made her sick to her stomach.
Then Jocelyn’s sister said something smart:
“I don’t think this is an area where you should be frugal. If you want to save money, sell one of your cars. Think about it … at the end of your life, would you rather look back and say: I’m sure glad we had two cars? Or would you rather say: I’m sure glad we made sacrifices so that we could surround our children with people who love them?”

Jocelyn thought about it and realized she could make a ton of sacrifices elsewhere. She and her husband could plan their meals a little better and save about $200 a month in groceries. They figured a way to lower the amount they paid for car insurance. And they made a deal with the nanny that made financial sense for everyone involved.
They made it work.
So what does this have to do with credit?
A lot of credit problems are actually spending problems. People make rash, spur-of-the-moment choices that don’t reflect their truest desires. They buy the latest iPhone instead of paying a credit card bill. They buy a new pair of shoes instead of saving money for a vacation.
If you think you are someone who makes bad decisions when it comes to spending money, ask yourself the same question Jocelyn asked: “At the end of my life, would I rather have this or that?”
Ask this question before making any purchase or budgetary decision:
At the end of your life, would you rather look back and say: I’m sure glad I had the latest iPhone? Or would you rather say: I’m sure glad I pinched pennies and saved money so that I could take care of my debt problems, invest in my child’s future, and take relaxing vacations with my family?

Spending money is almost always a choice between one opportunity and another. Just make sure you are taking advantage of the right opportunity and putting your money where it matters!
Please share your thoughts with me below!!
– Philip Tirone

David Vladeck director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection and DOJ Assistant Attorney Tony West today conducted a conference call I attended to provide additional information regarding an announced settlement with collection company Asset Acceptance. In the settlement Asset Acceptance agreed to pay the second largest fine ever against a collection company for alleged violations.
Asset Acceptance is one of the larger debt buyers. They purchase and collect old debt that had been previously placed with other entities but problems with accuracy and data create a situation where the data is less reliable, yet it was being used. As a debt is passed from one entity to another the quality of records deteriorates when people with similar names and address are involved. Erroneously people may be contacted about debts that never belonged to them at all. And that’s a problem.
In some states the applicable statute of limitations will prevent suits on this old debt but in others a partial payment or an agreement to repay will restart the clock on the ability for a debt collector or debt owner to sue. Debt buyers and debt collectors sometimes are not clear about this and can trick the consumer into reviving an old debt by agreeing the debt is theirs or making a partial payment.
The FTC and DOJ alleged Asset Acceptance had little or no evidence to support validation of some debts they were attempting to collect on and that Asset Acceptance did not take reasonable steps to validate. They stated Asset Acceptance continued collection efforts anyway. And reported to credit reporting agencies.
The action against Asset Acceptance creates a framework of what is acceptable.

1. Time Barred Debt / Statute of Limitation Debt: If a collector calls demanding payment Asset has agreed to disclose to consumers that it is time barred and cannot be collected via a lawsuit.
2. Partial Payments Reviving Debts: Many debt buyers accept partial payments to reset clock without informing consumers this will happen. Asset has waived it’s right to partial payment revival of stale debt.
3. Collection agencies park debt on credit reports to force consumers to pay off the debt to get rid of it even if it is not accurate. The thought was that a consumer applying for a loan or new credit and who discovered an old collection debt might just pay it off. Asset Acceptance has agreed to give consumers notice when it reports to credit reporting agencies.
4. Reliability of Information. If a collector or knows or should know the information is not accurate and the consumer has provided reliable information proving the information is not accurate, the collector must take reasonable steps to confirm the accuracy of the information before collection efforts. What those reasonable steps are was not made clear.

Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Tony West said, “Going forward we have a framework for the entire debt collection industry to follow.” This should be a message to debt collection industry that they will be held accountable, “if they don’t act fairly and responsibly.”
The FTC complaint against Asset Acceptance alleged Asset was:

1. misrepresenting that consumers owed a debt when it could not substantiate its representations;
2. failing to disclose that debts are too old to be legally enforceable or that a partial payment would extend the time a debt could be legally enforceable;
3. providing information to credit reporting agencies, while knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the information was inaccurate;
4. failing to notify consumers in writing that it provided negative information to a credit reporting agency;
5. failing to conduct a reasonable investigation when it received a notice of dispute from a credit reporting agency;
6. repeatedly calling third parties who do not owe a debt;
7. informing third parties about a debt;
8. sing illegal debt-collection practices, including misrepresenting the character, amount, or legal status of a debt; providing inaccurate information to credit reporting agencies; and making false representations to collect a debt; and
9. failing to provide verification of the debt and continuing to attempt to collect a debt when it is disputed by the consumer.

@GetOutOfDebtGuy
Author: This article was contributed by GetOutOfDebt.org, a site that provides free debt consolidation help and debt relief advice for people looking for answers.
Source: FTC and DOJ Announce Asset Acceptance Settlement Which They Want to Be Framework for Debt Collection Industry

I had something interesting happen to me this week …
I was listening to my sister talking about how anxious she feels. I was nodding, sympathetic, and at one point, I said, “Yes, I know that feeling.”
She looked surprised and said, “You feel anxious sometimes?” She assumed that I don’t feel anxious simply because I’m in a different place financially.
We started talking, and she asked me a series of questions:
“Do you feel stressed sometimes?”
“Of course,” I told her.
“Do you feel pressure?”
“Of course,” I said again.
Our conversation went on for a while. The point I wanted to make is simple …
Negative feelings and anxiety are normal. The secret lies in how you react to these situations. Here is the formula I use …
3 Questions to Ask When Having Negative Feelings

1) Why do I feel this way?
Instead of reacting immediately, identify why you are having negative emotions.
2) Do these feelings make logical sense?
I’ve found that oftentimes, my emotions are saying one thing, but my intellectual mind is saying another thing. When I think about the situation, I’m able to pinpoint the “hot buttons” that were triggered, but they don’t make logical sense. Many times, simply making this identification helps me move past these feelings. If not, I ask question #3.
3) Can I “be” with these feelings for the next few hours?
The answer, of course, is yes. I can live with negative feelings for a few hours, even a few days. By not trying to suppress the feelings, I can get over them much faster. And by allowing myself to “be” with them for a while, I resist the temptation to take immediate action, which might be inappropriate and reactionary.
What do you think?  Comment below to tell me how you deal with negative emotions.
– Philip Tirone

To make it through tough times more Americans have borrowed, stolen or raided their small retirement funds to make ends meet.
Loans from retirement funds jumped 20 percent last year. This really can’t be a big surprise to many. Faced with difficult financial decisions people will tend to gravitate towards the oath that seems easiest and less painful immediately.
It’s actually a classic example of hyperbolic discounting where a situation at hand today feels more urgent than one in the future.
The alarm over not being able to afford things leads people to make decisions in order to avoid more painfully imagined solutions like bankruptcy.
But what is actually more painful, a bankruptcy now that will take a couple years to overcome or retiring with little to no money left?
Logically an immediate bankruptcy makes the most sense. It allows people to discharge their debt, not have to raid the retirement accounts and actually leaves them better able to save for the future.
Along with setting themselves up to have to eat dog food to feed themselves in a future broke society, their poor debt relief decisions have left them unable to contribute as much to their retirement funds.
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute survey, 27 percent of respondents said they are “not at all confident” they will have enough to retire comfortably. The reality is the actually number is much higher since acknowledgement would require people to overcome denial.
If you retire without sufficient income your choices are to continue to work, and most likely at menial jobs, or find a way to live for less.
The standard of life we expect in retirement may fall significantly short of what we will actually face.
At risk also are college savings for aspiring students. Parents already struggling to just make it month-to-month are having to cut back on their savings and are not able to put aside as much for college for their children.
The lack of college savings will require more student to either not attend college or go further in debt with dangerous student loans.
According to the College Board, students are already borrowing about twice as much as they did only a decade ago.
The more logical outcome to making these issues work is going to be to maintain a smaller or lower lifestyle than expected. That’s going to be tough for many people.

@GetOutOfDebtGuy
Author: This article was contributed by GetOutOfDebt.org, a site that provides free debt help and debt advice for people looking for answers.
Source: More People Preparing to Eat Dog Food in Retirement

For all of my life and especially through my financial struggles the assumption that money troubles are tied to morality and that people with debt troubles are somehow morally broken or moral failures and need to repent at their very hour of need, persist. It’s a false belief that haunts nearly every single soul that has fallen into the pit of dark claustrophobic and oppressive debt.
Since I began helping other with debt problems in 1994 I’ve heard the same refrain over and over again, “But I made a promise to pay my creditors and I have to make those payments.” I hear you but I’ve got to say, “Or what?” Seriously, what’s going to happen if you don’t for a bigger and more important reason? Will your children be ripped from your arms while you sleep, will Bank of America stop making loans, or will you be judged and damned to hell for your inability to forecast the future and get it right?
The moral view of promises is rightly felt. We are taught as children that we are to keep our promises but those promises are about cleaning our room, not cleaning our room ten years from now with interest. And we cast guilt on those that make a promise but can’t keep it by calling them a liar and we are supposed to think less of them. Nobody wants that to be the impression of their existence. So because of incorrect thoughts during a panicked time in our lives we simply make some really bad decisions.
I remember feeling the same guilt as many others do when I landed in bankruptcy in 1990. I felt like a loser, horrible, and a man that had failed to honor his promises to creditors. “I made a promise and dammit I’m going to keep it,” I thought. What I didn’t know at the time was the second sentence that went with that feeling. I forgot to add, “Even if it means hurting my family and leaving us in a worse situation.”
I wondered what God would think of me for being a financial screw up and funny, I never worried about what God would think about me making creditor demanded minimum payments I could no longer afford on terms that basically left my wife and daughter homeless.
It took years of helping others and years of contemplative introspection to look at this issue of bankruptcy and morality with a different view. In retrospect a good swift kick in the ass and a year of therapy working through these twisted issues I built in my head would have allowed me to find similar answers in a shorter period of time. But leave it to the person all screwed-up to know what’s best. Oh yea, and then there’s the issue that I was so broke and without health insurance that paying for therapy was entirely out of the question.

And it may surprise you to learn that this debt, bankruptcy and morality issue is entirely complex and basically simple, all at the same time when you view it from outside the black hole of momentarily imploding debt that feels as if it will swallow your soul, whole.
Many hundreds of generations of people have embarked on unimaginable life journeys that end in servitude and slavery to pay off debts, including in some cultures debt bondage that lasts for more than one generation. Sadly debt servitude is not a lost practice and still exists today in many distant and remote locations. It is estimated that 27 million men, women and children are today serving as sexual or labor slaves because of debt.

The most common form of servitude today is debt slavery, in which a person becomes held as a laborer on a farm, or as prostitute in a brothel, or as worker on a factory floor after accepting a loan, or transport, or another form of assistance from a “lender.”
The lender is a slave owner or trafficker, often tricking laborers into working for little or no pay, making it impossible for them to escape their condition. And the enslaved, Cockburn writes, have nowhere to turn.
“Such captives the world over are mostly helpless,” Cockburn wrote. “They are threatened; they live in fear of deportation; they are cut off from any source of advice or support because they cannot communicate with the outside world.” – Source

Is slavery to repay debts moral? Is selling your children into lives of servitude a respectable or reasonable way to repay the debt from last years farm failure because it didn’t rain? Is it moral to sell your child into sexual slavery to pay the bill you can’t afford. Somewhere right now someone is say it is reasonable and they’re doing it.
So you see there is a moral slippery slope of what is appropriate to deal with problem debts. Somethings we’d never consider as appropriate, while others do every day. But if we want to judge our financial situation with morality it must be done in shades of grey, not black or white.
If we flash forward to a modern capitalistic society the issue of moral failure from bankruptcy is only applied to individuals. Corporations are rewarded for filing large complex bankruptcies to reorganize their financial state to get back to operating again.
Think about the restaurant chains with hundreds and hundreds of stores that file bankruptcy to keep them open and hopefully earning a little bit and that keeps a lot of people employed. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
But people are not big chains and what’s good for business and a wise move is feed to consumers as wrong and people are wrongfully manipulated into an opposite course of action that serves others through continued payments to creditors or through paying a debt relief agency to attempt to resolve the problem.
Hell, do you have any idea how easy it is to twist the mind of a fearful debtor? Pretty damn easy. Scammers and hucksters do it all the time for their own financial gain. They directly tell you or make you feel as if bankruptcy is only a last resort in order to promote their solution to extract a portion of currency from your wallet.
Let’s examine the transaction made by an individual when they enter into a promise to repay a loan or credit card.
Let’s say I was to borrow from you a cup of sugar and promise to repay it tomorrow. The chance of me repaying the sugar are high and it is a transaction with little risk. Not much is bound to happen between the time I borrow the sugar today and I make arrangements to buy sugar tomorrow and return the cup full.
But let’s change the transaction and say the deal is that I borrow $10,000 today and make a promise to repay the debt over the next 120 months in equal monthly monthly installments.
Here is the problem. The likelihood to forecast the conditions tomorrow will bring are very high. The likelihood you will be able to forecast your economic conditions over the next ten years is murky at best. Frankly it is only possible to do so by bringing in an actuary and extrapolating odds and chances of what will happen to a pool of people in a similar situation as yours, but not your individual life.
You can guess at what you’d want to have happen but nobody really knows what is going to happen. And a lot can happen in a decade or even a year. Your employment situation may change outside of your control, you may be struck with an unexpected illness, war may break out, a global economic recession may ensue, etc.
When a lender makes a loan one of the factors they consider is their risk in getting repaid. They already know some portion of people are not going to be able to satisfy the obligation. That risk is built into the cost of the loan for all in the interest rate component. If some people default within the range estimated, the lender still makes the forecasted profit.
The extension of the loan is not a moral affair between a commercial lender and an individual. It is a business transaction that is supposed to result in one outcome, profit.
When a lender makes you a loan they do not make you put your hand on your religious text and make a moral pledge to repay. They ask you to sign your name and enter into an obligation to repay is in accordance with these terms and the law. It is not a moral transaction. It is a legal contract.
There is not a hint of morality in the business exchange. The only allegiance the lender has is to their profit or to make shareholders happy, not to place you in a perch of moral uncertainty. If the transaction was based in some requirement of morality then why doesn’t the lender ask about your marital faithfulness, theft of pens from work, how much you help the less fortunate, or if you cheat on your taxes.
The only moral component that comes into play in a failed financial transaction is our internal feeling of failure to honor our promise. But in many small ways don’t we already do this every day?
When you obtain a driver license you enter into a promise that in exchange for the license you will conduct ourselves in accordance with the rules of the road. Is not coming to a full stop before turning right a moral failure? Is it a lie or a damnation against our future lineage? How about knowingly exceeding the speed limit by 7 miles per hour. Is that a moral failure?
Is there even a definitive difference between a moral failure and a failure in general? I realize I keep asking a lot of questions but introspection and an examination of these complexities requires you to consider a number of issues so you can come to a healthy conclusion.
Is it more moral to strand your family in an unsafe living condition where you are barely making ends meet for years on end and unable to save for emergencies so you can continue to struggle to make your minimum installment payments? Does your moral responsibility first extend to others before your responsibility to yourself or your family?

STOP And Think.

Think carefully about that question for a moment. Morally, do you put your duty and responsibility to a credit card company before that to keep you and your family safe and prepared for tomorrow?
The inability for people to make payments as they agreed is based in an inflexible agreement that would only be successful in a perfect world without unexpected life interruptions. That ten year repayment agreement assumed a lot of things; that employment would be secure, wages would rise, that harvests would be robust, that working conditions would continue to get better and that there would be no outside interference in your ability to make the monthly payments. That’s a lot of wishing isn’t it?
Agreements between individuals contain flexibility. If I was your neighbor or known member of your community I’d listen to your change in circumstances and we’d work out a resolution that made sense. That resolution might even include a forgiveness of your debt.
But creditors and credit card companies are not Phil down the street, they are instead large process driven organizations that conduct themselves with policies and procedures that result in inflexibility by their own choosing.
Their lack of accommodation occurs by the regulatory framework they must operate under and the incredibly high cost that would be incurred by treating each loan as an individual agreement to be negotiated separately.
Creditors or more so debt collectors only inject morality into the transaction when they want to collect it. They do this for one reason, to manipulate you into repaying. Remember I said how easily debtors could be twisted.
“If you were a respectable person you’d honor your promise to repay,” the collector may say. But isn’t the flip side true as well. If the lender was a respectable entity they’d recognize that circumstances have changed and there are now hurdles currently prohibiting you from making your minimum payment due even though you want to? They’d work with you. But the lender wants absolutes in an uncertain existence. Life just isn’t always that pretty and predictable as much as they wish it to be.
There are popular figures on radio and television that proclaim bankruptcy is to be avoided at all costs. There are certainly many debt relief websites that say that very thing as well to promote the product or service they are trying to sell. In fact before my enlightenment about bankruptcy I once felt the same way. I no longer do. I’m not afraid to clearly say, “I was dead wrong.”
Bankruptcy is a natural cleansing of the necrotic financial remnants that linger following an unfortunate event. It is a path to the resurrection of an otherwise doomed situation. The sweeping forgiveness of debts can be found in many, if not all religious texts. In fact if we can forgive sins, can’t debts be forgiven as well if need be?
How is it that I can ask God for forgiveness of some moral failure and it is forgiven but some feel they must struggle for years and years to make unmanageable payments to creditors to avoid a moral failure. It just doesn’t add up with close inspection. One of those assumptions or beliefs is not true.
I’m certainly not suggesting that your intention should ever be to take on credit with the intention of defaulting. But the idea of clearing debts to start over goes back nearly 6,000 years. It is a long historical tradition that is meant to accomplish one thing, freedom from an unreasonable condition and the ability to start over to do better and learn from the misfortune. Debt forgiveness has meant a breaking of tablets, tearing of contracts, or the destruction of records but all efforts accomplished the same goal, to free people and give them a legal second chance.
The forgiveness of debt was important enough a condition that our the founding fathers of the United States of America wrote it into our core documents without any attachment of morality.

The Congress shall have Power…To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; (United States Constitution)

Let’s flash forward again to modern day. A family is struggling to make ends meet. They’ve been selling all they could on eBay to get the mortgage payment together and the retirement accounts are now drained in an effort to morally meet their promises to repay.
But is that really the highest moral road or just one created out of a lack of clarity over this difficult subject and an inability to come to terms with this difficult subject?
If we are to view the situation in moral terms, is it more moral for a family to spend itself poor and rob the very retirement funds set aside to care for them when they can least afford it, thus potentialy casting them on the mercy of future public coffers when they may not be able to feed themselves?
At some point the ability for a family to stand up and say they need to address the situation in a logical and terms focused way, as was used to enter into the agreement, is more moral.
Interestingly bankruptcy does not rob people of the ability to honor their promises to repay their creditors. All bankruptcy does is provide the debtor with the flexibility they need to repay their creditors in accordance with what they can afford today and not based on what was hoped for eight years ago. That is if they so desire to do so. Going bankrupt places no limitation on your rights to repay your creditors the debt that was legally discharged.
Least we lose sight that like the contract that was signed to enter into the loan, bankruptcy is a mutually legal process and sanctioned under the law as a second chance and fresh start for people without an otherwise reasonable chance to recover from their financial misfortune.
So let’s turn back to a comparative question. If I said you had two choices to pick from to make your debt go away and give you the opportunity to learn from your financial mistakes and move forward, would you sell a loved one into some type of slavery or file bankruptcy?
Let’s put this morality issue into proper perspective. The bottom line is that in a number of different and various constructs, bankruptcy is not a moral failure and in reality has nothing to do with morality at all. It may be the most reasonable, levelheaded, and logical path to follow.
And unfortunately there is no permission slip I can issue you to remove doubt and moral fear from your consciousness as you consider bankruptcy. Dealing with those emotions will be your chore but keeping in mind all I’ve said here will help you to come to a clear, rational, and sound decision that is not based in half-baked assumptions.
If you’ve read this far it’s time for you to find a local bankruptcy attorney and discuss your situation with them. You may also find some additional help and solace in How to Get Out of Debt. The Honest and Unvarnished Truth.

@GetOutOfDebtGuy
Author: This article was contributed by GetOutOfDebt.org, a site that provides free help for people looking for advice on how to get out of debt or getting out of debt.
Source: Is Bankruptcy Sinful and Bad or Right and Moral? An Examination.

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the world… If you want to learn more about protecting yourself from identity theft, submit your name and email below and I’ll send you a 52-page report on how to protect yourself.

Are you hung over?
And I’m not talking about the booze-induced hangover (though you might have that, too!)
I’m talking about the post-holiday credit-card hangover …
The one that happens when you realize you spent way more than you meant to spend.
The one that causes a headache when you wake up, see your credit card bills clearly, and realize what you’ve done.
But there’s hope …
You can recover.
In just a few days, I’m starting a new-and-improved 14-Day Credit Challenge, where you can grab your credit card bills by the horns
once and for all.
Here’s the even better news …
The webinar orientation doesn’t cost a penny and I’ll show you how you can have a 720 credit score in just six months. The enhanced program will take your credit score from wherever it is today …
To at least 720.
In just six months!
It’s like aspirin for your credit card bills…
Click here to reserve your spot.
I’m so sure of my new Challenge that I offer a pretty gutsy guarantee: I promise that you’ll have a 720+ credit score in six months, or I’ll pay you $794.
So put my guarantee to the test! Best-case scenario, you’ll have a 720 score. Worst-case scenario, you’ll have $794.
– Philip Tirone

As you know, I’m a BIG fan of being a father, so naturally … I’m very involved with the National Center for Fathering and learning about “Championship Fathering.”
I wanted to let you know that the Center is raising awareness of fathering by giving away two tickets to the Super Bowl to a father and his lucky son or daughter!
Do you know a great father who would like to know about this?
If yes, please send this to him! Or, if you are a father, you can enter the contest yourself …

1. Like the National Center for Fathering’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/NCF4dads
2. Submit your email address to receive exact rules and regulations.

It’s that easy!
Please send this to any GREAT DADS who love football!
– Philip Tirone

If you feel like a company you paid for a service has not delivered the best place to start to attempt to resolve the issue is to contact the company directly. If you’ve tried repeatedly to get your issue resolved by sending an email or leaving voice mail and that’s not getting any attention, send a letter by some traceable means that provides you with proof of delivery. A signature or name of who signed for it is even more beneficial.
The least expensive service to use of to send your letter through the post office by certified mail, return receipt requested. When the letter is signed for you will get back a green postcard showing when it was received and who signed for it. You may also decide to send your letter by FedEx or some other express mail service to get additional attention.
Keep the return receipt postcard or some other delivered proof with a copy of the letter you sent in a safe place. You’ll probably need it later if you have to escalate your dispute.
In your letter give the company 14 days to respond, keep a friendly tone, and state what your issue is and the resolution you would like to receive. There is no need to be mean or nasty in this letter.
Let the company know that if they fail to respond you will escalate the matter to state and federal officials but you want to come to a win-win outcome that is good for both you and reasonable for the company.
Sometimes a company will come back with a refund offer to help remedy the dispute. While the refund offer may not be for the full amount you feel you deserve, only you can determine if the partial refund provides you with a satisfactory outcome and not left feeling cheated.
You don’t have to accept less than you are owed but there must be a cost-benefit determination to figure out if more time, pressure, and escalation on your part is going to result in a better outcome for you.
If the company does not respond or you feel it is insufficient you can escalate your claim to your State Attorney General, the Better Business Bureau, your local consumer affairs office or other enforcement office. You can find a listing of all consumer protection offices online here.
If you’ve been ripped off or have a complaint about a company that has taken your money or made you promises for a loan or was selling you some money saving service, credit repair, or debt help and just hasn’t delivered there are plenty of places to file a complaint in hopes of getting help.
But you may want to consider wiling an online report using the scam report and consumer complaint submission form.
This free service is unique as compared to other online complaint portals in that it companies that are the subject of a filed complaint are contacted and asked to respond directly to your complaint.
The goal of a consumer complaint using this service is to create a conduit for a solution and the problem being resolved.
Without a doubt the effective route to a resolution is to be levelheaded, persistent, and do what you can to work with the company first. Give them a chance to do the right thing. Your documentation that you tried and they did not want to assist you in resolving the dispute will come in handy if you later file your complaint elsewhere.
While this guide is written more for people that feel cheated by a debt relief company, the detailed step-by-step refund directions are still good for almost any dispute.
Author: This article was contributed by GetOutOfDebt.org, a site that provides free help for people looking for advice on how to get out of debt or getting out of debt.
Source: Have You Been Scammed or Ripped Off? How to Get Help and Get The Problem Resolved.