Cambridge Credit CounselingReviews of cambridge-credit.org

Response from Cambridge Credit CounselingNov 27, 2018

Before we address Ms. Carson’s inaccurate and baseless claims, it’s important for readers to understand how a debt management plan, or DMP, works. When a consumer enrolls in a plan, they choose which of their unsecured credit accounts to include, and the counseling agency makes payment proposals to each of those creditors, securing interest rate reductions and fee waivers whenever possible. The enrolled accounts are closed, which is a trade-off for whatever concessions the creditor chooses to grant to the consumer. The client makes a single monthly payment to the counseling agency, which then distributes appropriate amounts to each enrolled creditor. If the client fails to make a payment to the counseling agency, no funds can be sent to the client’s creditors. Counseling agencies are not lenders. We cannot cover missed payments, nor are we in any position to know what is happening with any account left off the DMP. Both of these facts are important in Ms. Carson’s case, as she failed to make timely payments, and she had other accounts that were seriously past-due that were not included in her program, but which are most certainly impacting her credit standing. All counseling calls at Cambridge are recorded, and a review of Ms. Carson’s case indicates clearly that her counselor reviewed all required material with her. Prior to enrollment, she was also provided with a written summary of her proposed Debt Management Plan, which breaks down everything she’d need to know about the accounts she had chosen to include in her plan, as well as the rate concessions we hoped to secure, the total amount to be paid over the estimated term, Cambridge’s fees – everything. The contents of a DMP Summary and our contract are closely regulated by the states. We don’t hide anything. Furthermore, our records show that Ms. Carson’s account balances did not double during the 9-month run of her DMP, as she alleges, though they would have increased due to her failure to keep pace with her required monthly payments. At the time Ms. Carson cancelled her Debt Management Plan, in September 2018, her credit report indicates she also had a medical bill in collections and two other charged-off debts that weren’t present at the time she enrolled with Cambridge, so it would have been impossible for her counselor to provide any guidance about those three accounts at the time. While we do sympathize with her situation, we feel certain that Ms. Carson was provided accurate information, and that her current situation is the result of her failure to make timely payments on her DMP and on at least 3 other accounts that were not part of her program.