Consumer complaint received 2024-02-05 00:00:00
Product: Debt or credit management — Debt settlement
Issue: Confusing or misleading advertising or marketing — 
Company: FREEDOM FINANCIAL NETWORK
State: NM

Complaint narrative:
Approximately XXXX. 

Freedom Debt Relief , LLC and XXXX XXXX were defendants in a lawsuit that was initiated by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Plaintiff filed XX/XX/XXXX and was settled in XXXX XXXX XXXX  in California on XX/XX/XXXX in favor of the CFPB Case # XXXX My husband and I were impacted by most of the XXXX findings and conclusions. We did not receive a claim # to file as part of this lawsuit against Freedom Debt Relief. However, after contacting XXXX XXXX today, the Settlement Administrator, for this case, they confirmed that we were not included ( listed ) by Freedom Debt Relief as one of the consumers covered by this case. 

I don't know how many consumers they " excluded '' from this case that were, just like us, impacted by the findings. XXXX XXXX let me know that they have completely closed out all post-judgment claims in XXXX. 

We actually finally fired Freedom Debt Relief after they took upfront fees from us, monthly deposits and would call to say they had settlement offers from some of our creditors that they asked us to accept which included an additional fee from them. Eventually, we discovered that the offers they were sending us and fees we paid if we accepted the offers were substantially more than what our creditors would send us letters for settling at a significantly reduced amount. This clearly showed us that they were not operating in our " best Interests '' but rather working to receive a fee on a higher amount than the creditors requested directly from us. On the last one that they sent us, I told them " no ''. They were upset. I then proceeded to inform them that the creditor reached out directly to us with a settlement offer that was substantially less than what they were wanting us to take. 

Being armed with the direct settlement offer from the creditor, I was able to get them to cancel our contract and stop paying these settlement fees. They were not happy about this but I was armed with an offer with a creditor that ended up being XXXX  of dollars less than what they negotiated and there were no fees. 

I don't know how many of their customers were not included in this case but can only guess that if we were, there were others out there that they did not disclose who were impacted either because they found legal loopholes as we did to get our contract canceled only after paying them fees and settlements that were higher than what the creditors actually would accept or they just left their consumers off the list of victims of their deceptive practices. 

We only found out after all of this was done that several of our creditors sent us tax documents which impacted our tax returns as income for the delta 's between what we settled these accounts for vs. the balances that they wrote off. So our nightmares continued for 2 tax returns. 

I'm filing this complaint specifically to state that we were excluded from the lawsuit that we directly impacted by from Freedom Debt Relief and only now have discovered that they were held liable for Findings XXXX and the case is now closed. I believe there should be no statue of limitations for joining a class action suit against a company who purposefully excludes giving the names of some of their customers who incurred financial damage by their actions as a part of the impacted group. To me, this just adds another layer of deception that the company engaged in. 

We personally do not have any of our documents and settlements from that timeframe anymore but I did still have a folder with all of our interactions with them in XXXX when the class action was filed on behalf of Freedom Debt Relief customers. I definitely would have kept that file had we been notified about the class action. Unless they have expunged their client records dating back to XXXX, they definitely should have us listed as one of their clients with all of our records that support our claim.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation