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This short writing will enlighten you to some of the problems with credit counseling programs. These are the problems that result in a drop off rate of in some cases over 80% of the clients who enroll themselves in these programs. Debtors should be knowledgable of these facts before they get themselves into a credit counseling program to guarantee themselves they are making a beneficial financial move.

1. A great number of the online consumer credit counseling establishments are made and funded by the actual credit card issuers themselves. They serve as a sort of middle man for the credit card issuers to collect the debt amount owed.

2. The online consumer credit counseling establishments work for and represent the credit card issuers; they do not work on behalf of the debtor. The credit card companies stateto the credit counseling company the minimum payment requirement, and the APR. There is no compromise at all on this.

3. The online consumer credit counseling firms can reduce the APR, however they cannot actually reduce the original balance. The typical APR on one of these programs is around 13% which is more in the middle than actually being a low interest rate. By not reducing the original balance they aren't truly a form of credit card debt relief, this is just an accelerated repayment program.

4. You will wind up actually paying more than the original debt amount, due to the monthly maintenance fees, APR and lowered monthly payments which drastically bumps up the amount of time you are going to be stuck in debt.

5. It can have a short term adverse impact on your credit score and is made a record to the public on your credit history, during the duration of the program.

6. Receiving a home loan while on a online consumer credit counseling program can become very hard, on the edge of being impossible.

7. Here is the number one reason people fail and read extremely carefully. If you fall past due only one payment while on a credit counseling program you will be booted out of the program and the creditors will not allow you to re-enroll into another program for up to a year. Putting your bills right back to where they were before, high interest and all. This is the reason why upwards of 75% of the debtors signed into these programs fail off.

Lay back and really think nice and hard about this for a sec. They put you on a credit counseling program that may last 5 years or more. We all know this journey called life has its ups and downs. If you find it very hard to be a client on the program in the first place you will drop off. Any unpredictable financial problems as little or large as they may be might contribute to you falling behind just one payment and getting kicked off of the program. You need to seriously think about how constant your finances and income security are before enrolling into a credit counseling program to keep away from being part of that 80%. The bottom line is debtors with a considerable sum of debt such as $15,000 or more should look more towards debt settlement than credit counseling. Credit counseling is more reasonable for those with much lower sums of debt that do not have much of any issues keeping up to date with their accounts in the first place. If you are looking to reduce your debt and get out of debt in a timely fashion, then credit counseling is just not for you.