By: Daniel Gershburg, Esq.
Want to know how many debt settlement companies or attorneys serve you with legal papers? They dont. Read it again. They don’t serve you with the legal documents required under New York law. What they do is try to “technically” serve you. Here is what I mean. Many people come to my New York office and say “They never gave me anything in my hand, I never took anything so I wasn’t served.” Nonsense. You can serve someone by coming to their house, attempting to serve them on a few occassions and then nail they summons and complaint on their door, and send them another copy in the mail (I’m simplifying this for the sake of understanding).
The problem here is obvious. Your apartment in Brooklyn thats listed on your credit card statement…you moved out of that place 15 months ago. The collection agencies don’t know and don’t care about that. They’ll serve you there anyway. They are specifically banking on the fact that you wont fight back. They are specifically banking on the fact that you won’t respond in any way until you get a judgment in the mail, or worse, until your bank account is frozen. Then they know what you’ll do. They know you’ll call back and try to settle the debt. The same debt thats now BALLOONED because of the interest and fees that have been running.
So Mr. Brooklyn Consumer Advocacy Attorney…what’s the solution? The solution is to fight back. The solution is to go to court against these people. I get it though. I understand many of you don’t have the time to take a day off work to spend in court. But you have to make the choice between being on the hook for thousands of dollars you potentially may not be responsible for, or taking it to some of these companies and putting up a fight WHICH YOU CAN WIN. They’re not seasoned professionals on the other end. They want to do as little work as is possible on your case because they have so many more people who will not even answer when they hear that they’re bank account has been frozen. It’s up to you to keep your hard earned money.
Daniel Gershburg Esq., is a Bankruptcy & Real Estate attorney serving clients in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, Long Island and Westchester. Mr. Gershburg has given lectures and presentations to both attorneys and the community at large surrounding Bankruptcy and financial advocacy in the New York City area. He is a proud member of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. Currently he is working on his first book giving practical advice about repairing troubled credit and how to improve credit post Bankruptcy
