They are collection agencies working for and under the control of the major credit counseling card companies. Most of these agencies will be able to help you do lower your interest rates a little and usually only concerning credit cards. It will only work if the credit card companies are willing to participate. If you need to get rid of debt, credit counseling agencies are not the answer. By the time you need to relieve the financial pressures of your debt, knocking a little bit of interest off of your credit cards is not going to be enough.
A bankruptcy, on the other hand, can get rid of debt; this is why credit-counseling agencies hate them. The credit card companies and the counseling agencies know that bankruptcy can get you out from under their control. If you can’t pay your bills and are considering using a consumer counseling plan to get out of debt, you should at least find a bankruptcy attorney that gives free debt consultations and see how bankruptcy works.
In some cases, the credit counseling that runs ads on TV and more often on the Internet are scams. Be careful when an ad offers to make you debt-free without having to file bankruptcy. More often than not, the old saying that “nothing in life is free” holds, and the victims of these scams send these scam organizations their money and never get anything in return.
The second scam is the “save 60% in just seconds,” a credit card counseling sales pitch. The first problem with this is that even if the credit counseling agency is real, they only represent the credit card companies, so they can only help you out with your credit cards. When you take this into account with the fact that all that they will be able to save you is money off of the interest, you can see you will not be saving enough money to help you get back on your feet.
Finally, the real problem with the credit counseling agencies is that even if they are not a scam, they are in effect looking out for the credit card companies’ best interests. It is how credit counseling agencies work. First, they work with credit card companies and get them to agree to lower interest rates in exchange for an agreement that outlines regular monthly payments set up by the credit counseling agency. Why do credit card companies decide to do this? The main reason is to keep you out of the hands of bankruptcy attorneys. Bankruptcy laws are to get the citizens out of debt, not interest debt.
Only bankruptcy can get you out of your debt; this is why the credit card companies and credit counseling agencies like to make bankruptcy seem so evil. Nobody wants to file bankruptcy, but there comes the point when you realize that you can no longer afford or ever pay off the debt that you have accumulated. When you get to this point, a credit counseling agency may seem like a great alternative. Still, chances are you will just end up in the same situation until you decide to file bankruptcy and relieve your financial burden.