Citizens Debt ReliefReviews of citizensdebtrelief.com

Citizens does not support, or doesn't seem to, transparency. I have no idea what is happening with my account since they do not send monthly statements. They said this will be done in 4 years and that's 14 months away and accounts have still not been settled. Getting a hold of them or respond to emails is difficult. They said if i made 6 months of payments that i can "graduate" early and get everything paid off, consolidation loan of sorts, but that is not true. You have to have perfect credit to get one and they tell to stop paying your debts so not sure how you can have perfect credit. I had 720 when i started this. They use a payment processor that takes fees from you and its unclear the fee schedule. I am not sure if they are doing this in good faith but you are in the program, they leave out to dry for the most part. I haven't heard from them for several months. I have my accounts and program looked at by a third party and I wont be done in 4 years like they promised. Its probably 5-6. And they word the contract with that could change based on negotiations and i still have outstanding accounts after 3 years, they are not very good. There is plenty of better, more reputable companies that can help you. If you do decide to go with them, track everything, the amounts how where your accounts go, what the amounts are, how much they were able to settle and what fees they are charging. Update: Well they try to get you to drop the review but then just go back to how they do business. Had talks and they tried to negotiate for me to take down the review, but they still dont communicate with you clearly. I haven't received any monthly statements or updates. So back to little to no communication. Oh and they do charge you regardless if the negotiations worked or not. They don't have to actually do any negotiations on your behalf and they will still charge you.

Poor communication and lack of support. The debts escalated into court cases without any guidance or counsel from this company. Despite multiple calls and reports on my part, there was little to no follow‑up and no meaningful response. On the few occasions when someone did answer the phone, the representative did not have any knowledge of my case, although I do acknowledge that they were always courteous and polite. Ultimately, I had to handle the negotiations and arrangements entirely on my own, which defeated the purpose of using their services. The debts escalated into court cases without any guidance or counsel from this company. Despite multiple calls and reports on my part, there was little to no follow‑up and no meaningful response. On the few occasions when someone did answer the phone, the representative did not have any knowledge of my case, although I do acknowledge that they were always courteous and polite. Ultimately, I had to handle the negotiations and arrangements entirely on my own, which defeated the purpose of using their services.

I trusted Citizens Debt Relief with $5,836.02 to help manage and settle my debts. Instead, they failed to pay my creditors, which led to attorney involvement and a wage garnishment that now takes $484 from every paycheck. One creditor added $2,352 in interest because CDR never contacted them. They ignored me for over a month until I filed a BBB complaint. After that, they briefly communicated, admitted fault, and agreed to send me $450 per month to help with the damage they caused. They made a few payments and then stopped without warning. No explanation. No response. Nothing. They have not replied to my emails, including the one about the attorney now pursuing collections. Aside from one recent payment to a single creditor, they did not pay any of the accounts they were contracted to handle. I’m sharing this so others know what happened before trusting this company with their finances.

Whatever you do, do not use Citizens Debt Relief. They are a scam. You can do better negotiating with your creditors on your own. If you absolutely need someone to represent you find a local lawyer that deals with debt issues. A lawyer will be cheaper!. I wish we had done this but didn’t know we could go that route at the time. Here’s how they work(or didn’t work): I gave them 3 creditors to negotiate with( $26k of total debt). They said they would negotiate them down to $19k total for which I would start paying $471/mo right away to build up funds. After 16mo I learned through my creditors that Citizens had made zero effort to negotiate or even contact them. On top of that, I negotiated directly with my creditors down to $13k on my own. When I told Citizens about this they didn’t know what to say except that I would still have to pay the $19k. Why would I pay $6k more than I needed to for your service I replied. This went on for a while(weeks) cause I was unable to get in touch with anyone at Citizens. (Once you question their process they will no longer answer your calls). In the mean time we received a court summons from a creditor, which would likely put our home ownership in jeopardy. So I closed my Citizens account(took 3 weeks to do something that takes them 5min cause no one would answer my calls), and demanded back my money that’s supposed to be sitting in an escrow account. They told me it would take 20-30 business days to refund me. It’s been 29-32 business days depending on which holidays they count and no funds yet. As a matter of fact my wife and I have called them at least 5x a week in the last 4weeks and not one call was answered, voicemail returned, or email replied to. They will take advantage of you in your time of need, if they actually negotiate for you may pay a little less on you debt but you’ll save a whole lot more money and time negotiating with your creditors yourself. They have made our situation a lot worse. Now we’re fighting for our home. They could care less.

Absolute horrible experience. Said several things that never happened. In the end they had me pull a loan that didnt cover all of the debt and told me to lie to the creditor about it. So overall instead of dropping the amount of debt they said in the beginning they raised my debt after 15 months to almost 15,000 more than what we originally signed. I tried to cancel and they pushed through three more "negotiations" which were what I was offered as settlements by mail and then on top they took their commissions for not doing a fu**ing think.. This company is worthless and a complete scam.. Now we have more debt, our credit is completely ruined, they took money for shit negotiations that were worse than what I was offered and stuck me with another loan for 600 more per month than what I was paying. I hope the company gets sued, would gladly join the lawsuit. NOW, I have a law firm representing me from all the lies and potential lawsuits they bestowed upon me and my family for their false scams and unethical business practices.

THIS IS A SCAM PROMISES PROMISES AND QUOTES ALL LIES I WANTED OUT OF THIS MESS AND NOW THEY WILL NOT RETURN MY MONEY. THEY HAVE NOT DONE ANY NEGOTIATING AT ALL. VERY DISAPPOINTED WITH THIS COMPANY. BEWARE OF LIES AND PROMISES. TODD STEINHAUS YOU REALLY SHOWED YOUR TRUE COLORS NOT RESPONDING TO MY EMAILS OR TAKING MY CALLS. I JUST WANT MY MONEY BACK . IS THIS HOW YOUR COMPANY MAKES MONEY BY STEALING IT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS.

I've been requesting follow ups for some time. I'm not getting any responses. I was sent to collections. I asked if I have to apply to their loan company to complete the debt reduction. No answers. No one will answer a phone, an email, or a chat message.

I don’t want to waste too much time on this because I’ve already wasted so much of my time trying to get answers but in a nutshell they are VERY poor at communication. Maybe 10-20% of the time you get an email response, to get any kind of updates on your account you have to call them (which shouldn’t be the case) but the phone line is always busy, and then if you are needing answers the representative (if you finally get one) can’t answer you never get a follow up from whomever they contacted to reach out. I could go on with a few other things but lack of communication and follow up has been the most frustrating experience so far and again I don’t want to waste more time writing a super long review.