Credit Counseling Centers of America

[shadow 12]

Any opinions on Credit Counseling Centers of America in Peoria, IL? Or any counseling service? how do credit counseling agencies work exactly? if you have 4 credit cards totaling $5,000 and each have minimum payments currently of approx $35 which barely covers interest, how can they help? Do they charge to help? Should you only deal with so called non-profit groups?

[justbeingher]

You do not owe enough $ for credit counseling. You'd need to owe at least $10000 for them to get involved.Supposedly they negotiate a deal with your cc company to lock in an interest rate, close your accounts and then you pay them off. I had a negative experience with this - a company told me they could get me a deal to lock in a decent interest rate on one high balance card I had - and as it ended up, they screwed up my relationship with my cc company, failed to pay them on time, and did not succeed in getting the deal they said they had - "due to circumstances beyond their control". Better to get a loan and pay them off at a low interest than to go through all that crap.

[Curiosity1962]

Why not try to do the credit repair yourself? There are many wonderful groups online that you where you can get information and talk with others who have done this themselves w/o having to pay anyone to do it for them. Here's just a few of the groups that I would recommend:

[Maria2Blue]

They lower you interest rates on all you credit cards to 9.9 % instead of the default 32.24%. Which drastically bring down you minimun payments. They also keep you from receiving additional late fees or over the credit limit fees. Usually about $39 each, so $78/mo. But let's say you minimum monthly payment is $250, and it is already 60 days past due, and if your credit card company accepts a proposal from consumer credit counseling services (cccs) for $50, the account will keep reporting to the credit bureau as past due until the payments made from cccs catch up to the min due. You might want to take that into consideration because it also hurts your credit, but it is better thatn your accounts reporting as past due and not making any payments. Good Luck!