[Text: How to Document Your Settlements]
Hi there. This is Michael Bovee with Consumer Recovery Network.com and I want to
continue on with an additional video in our Debt Settlement Series and actually
one of the most important ones. What you have to do to actually document
a settlement and make no mistake. You absolutely have to have these
settlements documented because they can come back to haunt you in a big way.
What happens when you negotiate and settle a debt we have talked about in a prior
videos you have to do this over the phone. You can't just hand off a letter
and expect to be collection agency or the bank, the collection attorney to respond
to these things. It is outside the norm and they are not
going to do it. They are almost the rarest, rarest of
exceptions so everything starts on the phone, but what about when you have got it
all worked out. You have got this meeting of the minds.
The bank agrees, the collection agency agrees to a certain amount and that
is something you can do on a ford. You need to memorialize that in a letter
and these very common letters that these agencies collection, banks, attorneys.
They use them over and over and over again. In fact it is a template and they just
insert your particular sometimes on the screen with your file,
they can click a button and generate a letter. So they are very common and they have templated
language some of that language is there to protect them and some of it is there to
protect you. There are some key items that you need to
look for. You need to be identified.
Your account needs to be identified.
The terms, meaning you don't have to show what you owed or the full balance
necessarily, but often times that will appear, but also you need to see that this
is what they are agreeing to accept. Now there is dollars that dollar amounts
spelled out. Any terms for the payments so if it
is spread out over any more than one lump some payment like a 2 payments,
3 payments, even 12 payments that has to be in the document and the date with which
that payment is due or the lump sum is going to be received and the fact that you
are settling this debt that you are not paying it down.
You need some kind of verbage in these letters that says that you are paying
this off that this is being settled, that there is no remaining balance owed.
Behind me on one pages of the consumer recovery network.com website is the
results page and we put these up there. There are about 20 of them.
If you click any one of these links you can see examples.
We purposely put examples up there of settlements from debt collection agencies,
debt buyers, banks and attorneys so you can see a mixture of what a settlement
letter looks like. We have sanitized them with our client's
information on them so take a look at some of these letters.
Use them as a template for something that you are looking for in your cellphone efforts.
Obviously, if you are working with a professional, if somebody like Consumer
Recovery Network or another debt settlement, debt negotiation professional.
You want to make sure that you get copies of all this.
Do not take for granted that somebody is always going to be representing your best
interest or storing that information for you. You need a copy of these things because
what happens if somebody disappears. You need that letter.
That letter by the way is what you use to beat somebody over the head with if that
deck comes back to life again. Not often or certainly not by with any
malicious intent, but accidents do occur. We are all human, we make mistakes.
The field wasn't checked off on a computer screen or what have you.
Your debt after you have settled it might get included and a bunch of other debts
that weren't settled and in this portfolio of let's say 999 accounts, yours is the
thousand and it is sold off to a debt buyer. This is the very common.
Debts get sold off all the time. If your debt was settled
and inadvertently included in that, you could begin to get collection calls from a debt
collection agency. Even have your account placed for the
attorney and start hearing from them and you are like, "I have settled this account."
Well prove it and you need that proof so what are you going to do, you are going to
have a settlement letter. No matter who settled the debt you or
somebody else and keep it in a safe place along with copies of any proof of your
payments whether that is from bank statements or a check or a cashier stub,
whatever the case may be keep all of that information and you are going to want to
keep it for a couple of years. This is just a question, again it is very
problematic to go back and clean something like this up without documentation.
Debt settlement letters are exceptionally important to make sure you heed this
warning and gather up all your information stored on a safe place.