This concise writing will reveal to you some of the problems with consumer credit counseling programs. These are the problems that turn in a drop out rate of over 80% of the people who enroll themselves in these programs. People should be conscious of these facts before they enroll themselves into a online consumer credit counseling program to ensure themselves they are deciding on a smart financial move.

1. The vast majority of the online consumer credit counseling establishments are started and funded by the actual credit card companies themselves. They are somewhat of a 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 orderto the credit counseling company the minimum payment that is required and the APR. There is no give and take at all on this.

3. The online consumer credit counseling companies can reduce the APR, however they cannot actually reduce the principal balance. The common interest rate on one of these programs is around 10% which is more in the middle than actually being a low interest rate. By not reducing the principal balance they aren’t really a form of credit card debt relief, this is just an sped up payment 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 greatly extends the amount of time you are going to be in debt.

5. It can have a temporary bad impact on your credit score and is made a public record on your credit history, during the duration of the program.

6. Attaining a mortgage while on a online consumer credit counseling program can become very difficult, on the edge of being impossible.

7. Here is the kicker and read carefully. If you fall past due only one payment while on a online consumer credit counseling program you will be booted off and the credit card companies will not allow you to sign into another program for a year. Which will put your bills to where they were prior to enrolling into the program, high interest and all. This is the reason why over 75% of the debtors enrolled in these programs drop off.

Sit back and really think nice and hard about this for a minute. They put you on a online consumer credit counseling program that may be up to 5 years or more. As everyone knows or will come to know the adventure that is life has its ups and downs. If you find it pretty hard to be on the program in the first place you will fail. Any unpredictable financial problems as big or small as they may be can contribute to you going past due just one payment and getting kicked out of the program. You need to very seriously think about how unwavering your finances and income security are before getting into a consumer credit counseling program to evade being part of that 80%. The bottom line is those with a larger amount of debt such as $10,000 or more should lean more towards credit card debt settlement than credit counseling. Credit counseling is much more viable for debtors with much lower sums of debt that do not have much of any quarles keeping up to date with their accounts in the first place. If you are searching for a way to lower your debt and get out of debt very quickly, then credit counseling is just not the way to go.

Steve Bis is a debt analyst and research assistant with the US Consumer Advocate, which primarily practices in credit card debt relief.

- Steve Bis