} "Has anyone ever used this company ..."
God, I hope not. Centennial Law ran a persistent spam campaign on Who Called Us for much of 2010. Hundreds of times they dumped a cut-paste covert classified ad in various debt collector threads, often badly composed and laced with misspellings. They frequently made misleading statements about FDCPA rights, such as a claim that it's an instant crime if "you have experienced repeated calls". They changed verbiage and URLs for another round every time Admin erased its prior posts.
In early October Centennial conducted its most ambitious plan yet to use a mystery call forum as an advertising landfill. They had some clown(s) repeating the same post on every existing debt collector thread .... *in alphabetical order* of company name. They worked overnight when site activity was low, dumping over 300 spams within four hours over two early mornings.
After each dump run the spammer(s) would then scoop up copied piles of existing comments and re-paste them to the same threads, in order to push evidence of the spam activity off the WCU home page. This was just unreal, the amount of trouble they were taking to abuse a single message forum. But one dunce slipped and several times posted the instructions which came with his spam payload:
"Step 3: When you have finished for the day, use the "cover postings" below until the regular postings of Step 2 are no longer visible on the homepage of whocalled.us. (Just use as many as you need, if there are not enough, start using the twice starting from the first one again)."
By the third day, following a report to Admin, this campaign was stopped cold. They tried some more cut-paste spamming through November or so, and seemed threafter to slink away defeated.
The object was to drive traffic to its slapped-together website, which I see they have edited only slightly since I last saw it a few months ago. It had major "insert content here" holes then, too. Oh, it seems helpful at first blush, parroting thin summaries of federal law. Nearly every page of the promoted site had the same prominent call to action, a link to ostensibly file a "violation report" which in reality is a prelude to a paid "representation agreement" for easy defenses you can mount via Certified mail. Read as, they want to see if there is a honey pot to chase, and if you're too weak and frightened to write simple letters to scofflaw collectors without some pinstriper holding your hand.
Mark me, I have nothing against seeking legal counsel for a difficult debt case. The kind of case Centennial wants, and the kind most people have, just isn't that difficult. You might be astonished by how often a collector will quietly back away from a single cease-comm or validation request notice. Those letters are no less binding or effective on your letterhead versus a rent-a-lawyer firm. For less than six dollars in paper and USPS fees you can buy more control and peace of mind than Centennial offers at fifty bucks a pop. (That as I recall was the base service price.)
As for more stubborn cases, the agreement page does explain contingency payment somewhat, but again Centennial doesn't tell the whole story. Even assuming you find a consumer lawyer which is not merely a bankruptcy mill but has actually fought collectors and banks to a standstill, it's more than likely that only cases with very obvious FDCPA violations, the "slam dunks", will be run on contingency. Even then you may be asked to front court filing fees. Centennial meanwhile wants you to think it's all a free ride, and that working a debt case is like pulling the arm of a slot machine. They dangle the consumer's $1000 statutory prize but are really playing for the two or three grand in their own fees.
Centennial belongs to a class of cowboy litigators and hucksters, also fond of spamming complaint forums, who can be as mercenary as the collections henchmen they purport to fight. Also like the enemy, they all try hard to make you think you are powerless and need rescuing. All you need is an education in the debt industry and the laws which help defuse its abuses.
I always start people at the FDCPA source, the FTC. This law I think was designed for DIY, by regulators who considered that people accused of debt problems may lack money for lawyers besides. You can read the whole Act, staff opinion letters used in court cases, and other useful things.
http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpajump.shtmGood intel on collections abuses and defense strategies may be found at Collectors Exposed, Credit InfoCenter, DebtorBoards, and Ripoff Report. This very site and Who Called Us (between spam plagues) often have a good volume of anecdotal evidence, too.
Reply to topic