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| - My husband and I contracted this office to help with a bankruptcy. The experience with Charles was undulating, tending toward negative.
We first met him a few years back when he was at his own office somewhere in uptown. His services are clearly popular, because there were a lot of people waiting to see him. The office was organized and well-staffed, which was a good first impression. However, what was disconcerting was the receptionist at the time. Her desk was in the open, which meant that when she took calls from customers who were asking questions, you could hear the details of the discussions. I have never worked with a bankruptcy attorney before, but I would think, for confidentiality purposes, these are discussions you would have away from the general public.
We actually never got to meet Charles, because I think he had paralegals handling the filing. That's who we worked with. Overall, the impression was more positive than negative, so we were pleased.
Due to several family issues, we couldn't start the bankruptcy until a year later. We had made the necessary payments, minus the filing fee. So we didn't see him until sometime later to move forward. He had moved to his own office in a nice part of town; his office was very nice, much nicer than his last. Unfortunately, this is when our experiences took a nosedive.
He worked with us to complete the paperwork, but I found this process to be unnecessarily complicated. On one occasion, he forgot to have us sign a form, so we had to travel down to the office to complete something that could have been handled with the other documents.
Where the relationship took a steeper nosedive was when it came to following up with him if we had questions about the bankruptcy. He was an incredibly difficult person to get in contact with. We would leave multiple messages for him, and it would take him up to a week to return the call. My thought was that he could have sent a text message or e-mail, or he could have left a quick voice mail letting us know that he got our messages and would get back in contact with us at some point in the future. No, it was a waiting game with him. This was certainly a point of frustration with him and his services.
What was jarring was what happened next. When we got to our meeting of the creditors, we were in the waiting room and noticed that the attorneys for everyone else who was waiting were showing up and rehearsing the meeting to calm noticeable jitters and make the process easy for both the clients and court. This was a professional approach. Five minutes before we were all supposed to go into the court, Charles still had not shown up. My husband called him and, shockingly, reached him on the phone. We confirmed that he was still coming, and his response flabbergasting:
HE HAD FORGOTTEN OUR MEETING WAS THAT DAY; HE THOUGHT IT WAS THE FOLLOWING WEEK!
He said he would "speed" down to the court after he gathered our paperwork. Thirty minutes later, he walked in. Thank goodness we were penultimate in our meeting, because had we been first, we got the impression that the judge would have rescheduled us, which would have been a problem, considering it was hard enough for my husband to take time off work.
When he did show up, he handled himself professionally and answered all the questions that were asked.
Fast-forward two months to December. We took a call from a creditor who was supposed to be included in the bankruptcy, and it was from that creditor that we were told that our bankruptcy case had been dismissed! We called the courts to determine the reason for the dismissal, and we were told that a particular form had not been filed even though the courts sent out multiple notifications to Charles that the form was needed. We called Charles, and, of course, he returned our call after three or four days. He stated that he had filed the form and wasn't sure why the courts never got it. Frankly, I didn't believe him. Considering the courts stated that they sent multiple notifications to have the form completed, one would think that Charles would have responded to at least one of those requests. Nonetheless, he responded, and the case was reopened.
The discharge happened approximately a month later, which was a relief. Fast-forward two months to today, and we are having considerable issues cleaning up our credit report with creditors. Several creditors stated that they needed a schedule of accounts to show that they were explicitly included in the bankruptcy, which sounds reasonable to me. At present, it's been one week of multiple messages having been left at his office and on his cell phone, and we still have not heard from him. The courts stated that the attorney has to provide this information. We have no reason to believe we will hear from him again.
This was an overall poor experience. I would encourage potential customers to seek bankruptcy assistance elsewhere.
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