Smith & Assoc

At least you got live people on the other end of the phone! I get several messages every day from "Smith & Associates"--the same damn prerecorded message every time--from various rolling phone numbers. If I have a chance to answer the phone, there's nobody on the other end. If I call back, I get no answer. I guess they don't know whether or not they want to harass me for any junk debt (and I have plenty from the past). They're just a freakin' nuisance and need to be prosecuted. End of story.

This company is made up of horrible people!



Here is our story, if you're being sued by these scammers I hope it helps you.



My husband and I both worked 2 jobs to pay off all of our old debts so we could buy a house. My husband paid for his credit score each month from all three companies and a debt from them never showed up. Turns out my husband had a debt from 10 years ago that wasn't on our credit report. The debt was with a respectable bank and we known about the debt we would have paid it. Smith and Associates are junk debt collectors! They bought our debt for pennies on the dollar, monitored us and when they saw that we had bought a house, they served us papers for court. This is NOT a debt we owed to them, they bought it for NOTHING like they do with all of their debts and they sue everyone figuring most people will be so scared by a lawsuit they will pay it. My husband and I are both college graduates and I consider us reasonably intelligent people. Junk debt collectors sue to scare people into paying not only the original debt but one with inflated fees and attorneys costs (illegal for them to do by the way) Being sued was terrifying! To be honest, we were so terrified at first we just considered paying the whole amount out of our very small cushion of savings. My husband had recently stopped working to go to school full time and I had just had our first child. We didn't have the extra money to just pay it and be done with it.





I did a LOT of research that weekend as we we're terrified and didn't know what to do. I found out that T.K. Financial and Smith and Associates are the same company. They share an office. T. K. Financial buys debts for pennies on the dollar and buys a TON of them and pass it over to Smith and Associates to sue every single one of them. The reason is that they know people who are in financial ruin can't afford to fight in court and would rather just pay it than have it on their report.



You can fight it! And you can actually profit from fighting it!!



They sued both my husband and I even though it was only his debt because they knew we would have to pay 250$ per person to file an answer and it would cost us more to both be sued. I called every lawyer in San Diego and even the Legal Aid Society. Most wanted to charge services a la carte and would have charged us upwards of 500$ just to file the answer and nothing else (in addition to the 250$ per person to pay the court). I was lucky enough to come across an amazing local firm willing to fight this. They took our case and would see it to the end for 750$. It seems like a lot of money but its worth it when you compare it to the 6000 they were trying to sue us for even when the original debt was only 4000)



You have 30 days from the time you're served papers to file an answer with the court. Even if you pay the debt or something is settled between you and the creditor make sure you call the courts and are sure they dropped the case. These people are RUTHLESS and not trustworthy at all. They will find any way possible to screw you, harass you, scare you or make your life a living hell.





We waited a few weeks before hiring our lawyers and the whole time were trying to negotiate with Smith and Associates. They were unwilling to compromise on the amount, take smaller payments or generally be reasonable about the whole situation.



Long story short we sued them, they dropped our debt case and our laywers were able to secure a generous settlement in our favor since they were having their automated caller call us at all hours.



Fight this company!

Beware!!! shyster law office collections: 510-964-4505 510-964-4517 510-964-4505



Smith And Associates, 930 San Pablo Ave. Pinole, CA 94564

main tel: 510-964-4106