Related Services - The following directories of companies and services offer a wide variety of financial programs to assist you with handling your debts. Consolidate your bills with a debt consolidation loan or use a debt management or credit counseling service for help with your credit card bills and other payments.

• Need Personal Loan - Need a personal loan for debt consolidation? These types of loans often do not require collateral and are available to homeowners, as well as renters.
• Debt Consolidation Program - Learn more on how consolidating your credit card debts can work for you and potential pitfalls that you need to avoid. Also, review a list services that offer to help people lower their bills into fewer payments or even one payment.
• Debt Settlement Company - Simply too much debt to get a grip on? Review a list of companies and learn more about this service that uses debt negotiation and arbitration to help people that need assistance with eliminating their debts.

What You Can Learn from Other Consumers' Questions and Concerns

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Billing disputes and errors, primarily involving credit cards. Sometimes something goes wrong, including bills that are incorrect or card payments that are posted late. When that happens, people contact the FDIC for help, and our response is usually to provide guidance regarding their consumer protections under the Fair Credit Billing Act. You may not be able to avoid a billing error, but it's important to closely monitor your account and report errors promptly to your financial institution to have it fix mistakes.

"To fully protect your rights under the law, consumers should write to their financial institution at the address provided for billing errors and not send their letter with their card payment, which goes to another location," said Janet Kincaid, FDIC Senior Consumer Affairs Officer. "If that doesn't resolve the dispute, we encourage folks to write the lender's primary federal regulator for additional help." (For related tips, see the article about how to complain effectively.)

FDIC Consumer News is published by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

FDIC Consumer News is produced quarterly by the FDIC Office of Public Affairs in cooperation with other Divisions and Offices. It is intended to present information in a nontechnical way and is not intended to be a legal interpretation of FDIC or other government regulations and policies. Mention of a product, service or company does not constitute an endorsement.

Find current and past issues of FDIC Consumer News at http://www.fdic.gov/consumernews. Refer to this same index to locate the issues that are specially formatted for being reprinted in any quantity.

To receive an e-mail notice about each new issue of FDIC Consumer News posted on the FDIC Web site, with links to stories, follow instructions posted at www.fdic.gov/about/subscriptions/index.html.

Last updated on 2/1/2007

Make the correct decisions when shopping for banking, debt consolidation and related financial services. Educate yourself!

The Debt Consolidation Loan Directory has a growing library of free informative / educational financial resources for consumers shopping for many types of services related to the management of your money, such as consolidating credit card debts, fraud alerts and car insurance. There is no better way to make decisions regarding the management of your personal finances than to read and understand how they work. Please feel free to visit our consumer resource library for more information.

• Cell Phone Banking - New cell phones are constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated. This includes adding the capability of handling online banking through your phone. This FDIC article discusses some of the possibilities and precautions you should take when using your phone for banking purposes.
• How to Protect Yourself with FDIC Insurance - Read up on what qualifications are necessary and how to determine if your deposits are covered by FDIC insurance.
• Direct Deposit Safer than Checks? - The US Treasury Department reports that a majority of surveyed consumers mistakenly believe that paper checks are safer than direct deposit.
• Consider the Fees! - Learn what to look for and examine the details of each banking account offer for possible fees, such as: inactivity, minimum balance and ATM withdrawal fees.

DebtConsolidationLoan.com is a service of Infinamic, Inc. All debt consolidation loans and financial services information is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. Infinamic, Inc. is not responsible for the content and services, that may be provided to you, by following the links from this web site. Use this service at your own discretion.