There’s a distinction there.

The other part most don’t consider is that we are only able to remain in business, doing what we do, because we benefit all three parties: clients, ourselves, and creditors. Again, we don’t have “convenient” laws at our disposal to shove our proposals down the throats of creditors. If the creditors perceived no benefit to what we do, they would not cooperate with our efforts, we would achieve no results for clients, and would be out of business.

So, what benefit do the creditors perceive? Very simply: an avenue to stop throwing good money after bad. It’s bad policy for a creditor to simply believe a debtor, and most debtors would probably find it very difficult not to overstate their hardship, if they have one at all. Moreover, the creditor has a reputation to maintain. They simply can’t easily back off collection efforts, for fear of word getting around and everyone jumping on the forgiveness bus.

What they need is someone with whom they can develop trust, so that when that person or company says: you need to make an exception here, they tend to believe it.

And, of course, that implies a responsibility on our part. We can’t bring them a deal unless it will stand up to scrutiny. We have a reputation built over years to maintain, and no one deal — or dozens — is worth risking that trust; which is why we do our very best to make sure that clients coming into our program have a bona fide hardship.