Settlement - Current Balance or Inflated Balance

When you don't make payments for awhile, of course late fees and interest are going to continue to add to the amount due. It's part of the negotiation process to try to get as low a settlement as possible, so that even with the added fees you are still coming out way ahead. Of course, there are accounts, in my experience the small pesty ones, that will poke around and let the fees add up, then try to make you believe they are offering a good deal when it's actually the amount of the original debt. Thank heaven this hasn't happened on the larger ones. If you have a $10,000 account, for example, that has grown to $12,000, a 30% settlement would $3600. Still a good deal. Every creditor or collector is different though; there do not seem to be any set rules about what they offer people. Even the same creditor will treat different clients completely differently. No way to predict.

i know through my company they tried to stop the fees and %. They claimed that they were negotiating the amount that when i stopped paying and for most of the companies they complied. They got a few late fees and high % in there but for the most part my amounts were negotiated at the time of stop payment. I had 1 card that refused to do this though. But even still my settlements were way worth it even with some pesty fees.