How We Review Debt Relief Companies
Every review on this site checks a company against the same handful of criteria, drawn from federal law and public complaint data rather than a proprietary scoring formula. Here's what actually goes into a verdict.
Accreditation and licensing
Whether the company carries a real, checkable accreditation — BBB accreditation, or membership in an industry self-regulatory body like the Association for Consumer Debt Relief (ACDR, formerly AFCC) or IAPDA. We link directly to the accrediting body's own listing rather than taking a company's claim at face value.
Fee structure and federal compliance
Whether the company's fee model matches what federal law actually requires. Under the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule, a debt settlement company can't charge an upfront fee before it settles or otherwise resolves at least one of your debts. We check that a company's published fee structure reflects this, and flag it clearly if it doesn't.
CFPB complaint history
We check each company's CFPB Consumer Complaint Database record for volume and pattern — not just the raw complaint count, which mechanically scales with how many clients a company has, but what the complaints are actually about. Where this site has a matching company profile or complaint lookup page, we link to it directly so you can check the current numbers yourself instead of trusting a snapshot in the review text.
Operating history
How long the company has actually been operating in debt settlement specifically, since a longer track record means more complaint history and more outside scrutiny to check a claim against.
What we don't score
We don't score or rank companies against each other on a numeric scale, and we don't have a paid or affiliate relationship with any company reviewed here — see editorial standards for the full disclosure. A review's "who should get it" section reflects debt settlement's real structural limits (it won't stop an active lawsuit or garnishment the way a bankruptcy filing can, and it isn't guaranteed to settle every enrolled debt) rather than anything specific to that one company — those tradeoffs apply industry-wide, not just to the company being reviewed.