About Michael Brotherton Expertise Consumer/Debtor Rights Advocate.
Mike Brotherton is a negotiator with over 30 years experience in consumer lending and collections. Mike has 30 years in the credit and collections industry as a former loan officer, debt collector and manager of two finance companies over several years.
Mike is well versed in Loss Mitigation practices and the legal collection process. He has helped literally thousands of people over many years overcome serious financial problems such as foreclosure, creditor lawsuits and abuse by debt collectors. For more information about resolving your "financial emergency" visit www.financialemergency.com.
FinancialEmergency.com is a consumer web site which actively promotes Fair Debt Collection Practices and other consumer protection laws. We teach DEBTOR RIGHTS and enforcement of those rights. The more informed you are of your rights and the credit collections practices of creditors the more peace you can have dealing with your FINANCIAL EMERGENCY.
Most financial problems are fairly common and as such have some very common solutions. The key is understanding your rights in the collection process and how to enforce them if need be.
Primary business- Debtor Rights Advocacy and Debt Mitigation relating to foreclosure, creditor lawsuits, and other serious financial problems.
www.financialemergency.com (copy and paste in browser).
Experience 30 years experience negotiating disputes and resolving financial issues related to consumer debt, corporate debt, and mortgage restructuriing.
Question Our wedding was double-booked at a large Washington, DC hotel. To help resolve the matter we agreed to move our wedding around (the other party was not willing to budge) in exchange for payment of additional vendor services based on the time change, as well as a few benefis for making the change on our part.
We followed through on our part but the hotel has not fully paid for the additional vendor services. It came to the point where we had to pay them to avoid embarrassment and harassment and increasing interest charges.
We have been trying to get the reimbursement for this from the hotel for the past 6 months, including contacting them on our honeymoon. They have been saying the check is being processed, we will call you when it's ready, etc. We have tried to follow up and we have called, faxed, emailed and gone in person to try to understand the hold-up and they give us the same run-around (someone is out who needs to sign/authorize the check, they are double-checking the numbers, there is a delay in the accounting dept, etc).
What are our rights and options at this point? We have a contract and we have documented emails, fax, etc. of our efforts and their responses/reasons for delay. For the last two months however, they are ignoring us altogether. We have spent countless hours on this and this is money we need and could have put in our savings. Do we need to pursue legal action at this point and what will it cost us?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Answer It appears they are stalling for some reason. If you have a contract and they have not responded to emails or your attempts to get it resolved file a suit in small claims or circuit court where they are located. You may want to send them a certified letter informing them that if you do not receive payment in 5 or 10 days you will be filing suit. If they do not, file the suit. Let the judge sort it out. They are just playing games. You dont have to play along.
