does this sound normal?

Why do you want to pay Discover when you have hired a settlement company for taking care of this account. I will suggest you to get your counselor in touch with Discover. Your counselor might be negotiating with the company over this account. He must have all information about them.

Do not pay on your own if you are working with a settlement company. It might result a mix up in the negotiations.

It is my settlement company that asked me to pay discover a few bucks.

Debt Settlement programs do not work in this manner. Your counselor opens a new account where you send your monthly payments. During this time, you are required to default in your bills for a couple of months so that negotiations can be done with the creditors. The creditors take some time to accept the proposal of the consultant. You are required to send your monthly payments without fail. Once the deal is final, money from the account is sent at once to the credit company.

Know others who are working in this program

http://forums.debtcc.com/forums/settling-debt.html

http://forums.debtcc.com/forums/limited-control.html

http://forums.debtcc.com/forums/about10687.html

So, I take it from your answer, that no, this is not normal. I'm going to give them a call and ask them what the heck is going on. I'm really losing faith in this company. Heck, if discover sues me, they're really not going to get anything anyway. I've got nothing to give!

Get a free quote from a consultant here. Register in this site and discuss the matter with a professional. Draw a conclusion after discussing the matter with a trained professional. Sign up and someone will call you back soon.

They use this scare tactic to scare or trick you into paying them something more by screaming "litigation" at you.

Don't fall for it. BUT do let your settlement company know about it.

Going Crazy: You wrote: "Heck, if discover sues me, they're really not going to get anything anyway. I've got nothing to give!"

Be careful about taking that kind of attitude. If Discover sues you and wins, it doesn't matter if you don't have money to pay the judgment. First of all the judgemnt will go on your credit report and seriously impact your credit in the negative. Secondly, Discovery could initiate various proceedings to attempt to collect the debt like wage garnishment, liens, foreclosure, etc. The court does not care if you don't have the money to pay the judgment. The creditor, by virtue of the judgment, is allowed to use the court to help it collect the judgment and there's not a whole lot you can do to stop it.

I definately think you need to speak with a different settlement company to find out what they think about your situation. The worst thing you can do is let it slide and do nothing. This will only make the situation worse.

Discover would probably win, however, I jointly own my house with someone not related to me or involved with me, so that would be a nice little lawsuit from him. I do have the phone number for Legal Aid, an organization of lawyers that assists those of us 125% below the poverty level. Worst comes to worst, I'll declare bankruptcy. My credit score is really the last thing on my mind. At this moment, I plan on moving to another settlement company and asking my lawyer just what to do about a company that repeatedly tells me that discover cuts deals with them all the time... but yesterday, told me that discover hadn't done any settlements since April (I joined in May). interesting...

i actually found out from my debt settlement place the reason discover thinks i have money is i apparently have a credit card somewhere with a zero balance that could hold THEIR balance. Or I should say, I did. I canceled that sucker today. I'm not trading one debt for another. That's partly what got me into this mess.

GoingCrazy: You should definately use bankruptcy as a last resort. With the new bankruptcy laws in place, it is a much worse process than it was before. If you can get another debt settlement company to help you out, go for it. I think you did the right thing by closing the other credit card - it probably just would have made the situation worse.