Be careful when looking for debt relief information online, certain forums, not all, are used as money making opportunities hiding behind the excuse they want to help. The internet is the best tool we have available to learn and gather information on any subject we can think of and debt relief is one of them.
I constantly enter many of these forums and read posts by people looking for help, many of the answers are true and provide great advise, some are not so good and can only lead to mistakes. We must keep in mind these forums are open to anyone, by that I mean anyone. Many people have used these forums to gather personal information and sell it to third parties as LEADS, in most cases this is an illegal practice but we must read all the fine print before we click on the I Agree button. What this means simply is some forums sell your information to debt counseling agencies, debt settlement companies, etc... In some cases these very same forums will steer you to their own debt settlement programs. All they had to do was to get you to place your name and email address online and they will place you on a database and sell it to debt relief providers, that simple.
Another angle you will find in some of these forums is REFERRALS, what this means is a person will post a question such as, does anyone know any good debt settlement companies to work with? Of course people will provide names of companies and so on. These people make money by simply sending people to the companies they are paid by. Debt settlement companies often infiltrate these forums and drive unsuspecting clients to their programs.
Some forums or forum owners are simply referral, leads providers for debt settlement companies but they will not admit it since there is actually no money being taken from anyone on their sites. they receive their kickbacks from their clients, in this case the debt settlement companies.
If a forum is used to ask questions regarding debt settlement, debt negotiation or simple financial advise make sure to verify the information obtained before actually following up on it, many unsuspecting consumers fall into this trap. Always do your homework and follow your instincts, it is better to err on your own than have someone else make you do it. As I have always said if you are looking for debt relief help the best place to start is with state and local officials.
Our government has set up sites where they list registered agencies that are trustworthy to work with, debt settlement forums are great if you are gathering information but always remember to take that information with a grain of salt.
Dan Delgado is an active unsecured debt negotiator, he has experience negotiating personal as well as business debt. For more information please visit http://pemperandgartle.com/
