Credit counseling services may be of help to people who don't know how to budget their money, don't know that putting too many purchases on credit cards is a problem, and/or are not capable of contacting creditors on their own and requesting to set up a payment plan.

The trouble is most people who get into credit card debt know how to budget, know what is right and wrong when it comes to using credit cards, and haven't run into problems as a result of frivolous and wild spending. For people who haven't run into credit debt as a result of stupidity or wild, frivolous, spending credit counseling services are useless.

Sometimes credit card debt snowballs when a person's income is suddenly stopped, and any nest-egg has become depleted. It may not be that the person originally charged more than s/he could have paid, but rather that income stopped unexpectedly. Nest-eggs only go so far, and if they're dipped into over a period of months to pay things like mortgages, rent, and utilities for a family the first thing to go may be the credit card payments.

Large, unexpected, expenses that must be paid often drive people to using credit cards for things like purchasing groceries and other necessities.

Sometimes the person who will eventually end up with snowballing credit card debt would not have found himself/herself in that situation had a creditor been willing to just give that person a few weeks in order to get reorganized or receive a delayed check s/he was expecting. Instead, banks and credit card companies are unwilling to give people with overdue accounts even two or three weeks "grace time". Instead, its more profitable for them to refuse to give someone a little more time to get everything back in good shape because snowballing fees for late accounts is a lucrative business.

People who have found themselves in credit card through reasons other than wild spending and ignorance may call a credit counseling service in the hope that such a service may be able to offer some sort of help with buying a little time, maybe some special short-term loan program that would help them catch up late payments and start anew, or any other kind of help that may actually be useful.

What credit counseling services do, however, is tell people, "The first thing you need to do is cut up your credit cards". Most people who have fallen into credit card debt of the non-frivolous variety would prefer to find a way to catch up and try to restore the good credit they may have had until they ran into what may have been a one-time or short-term crisis. Many people a) prefer to try to restore their accounts to being in good standing and b) find it offensive that a credit counseling agency does not recognize that all credit card debt is not the result of a person's inability to behave once s/he has a credit card.

Credit counseling services offer education, but not everyone with debt needs education. They offer some type of intervention between debtors and creditors, but anyone who can pick up the phone or write a letter can usually set up a payment plan with a creditor. Some credit counseling services may work out a situation where the debtor sends one payment to other service, and the service pays the creditors. Some agencies, however, may charge an individual a fairly good sized fee to do this (sometimes about $200). There are people who would be better off using their $200 to pay down their credit balances than to use the same $200 to pay a debt counseling service.

There may be times when a credit counseling service would advise filing bankruptcy. That isn't necessarily the kind of help people are seeking when they contact a credit counseling service to look for help. People generally know when bankruptcy appears to be the only option. When a credit counseling service advises a potential client to file bankruptcy that is essentially telling that client they cannot be helped. So who, then, do credit counseling services really help?

They don't help people who need a temporary boost of money or time in order to get themselves back on track. They don't help people who are in serious enough trouble to consider filing bankruptcy. They don't help people who don't need their so-called "education" about money management and use of credit. They don't help people who contacted them in the hopes of salvaging their damaged credit.