Did I make a mistake ?
I was in serious financial trouble and creditors were on my back 2 years ago .I choose to pay my creditors through a credit counselling service .I have less than two years left to pay (approximately 35,000) . I continued paying my car lease which ended last month . It is an absolute necessity that I have a reliable vehicle for my job.Without one I do not have a job. I had been saving extra to ensure I had a down payment for another car when the lease ended . I tried for 2 months to lease or buy a vehicle with a 10,000 dollar down payment. I tried almost every dealer ,bank and high risk lender and they told me no .Wells Fargo wouldn’t even discuss it with me they just turned me down. The banks told me that my credit is worse than if i had declared bankruptcy.Now I feel that a counselling service only benefits a creditor and not a debtor.In what way does a counselling service help a debtor ? I would never recommend this to a family member or friend .The only good advice is to go bankrupt or make a proposal .
Credit counseling services are designed to be used by people that can afford to repay 100% of what they owe – they simply need relief from high interest and the convenience of a single monthly payment. If you can afford to repay your debts in full then you probably aren’t insolvent and therefore you may not have been eligible to file either bankruptcy or a proposal.
I reside in Ontario and the only time I have heard a tale similar to yours is when the person failed to use one of the members of the Ontario Association of Credit Counselors (a group of non-profits that provide this service across the province). Instead, the person used some net-based solution (presumably from the US) that may have been able to negotiate a payment plan for the individual, but they were not properly set up to communicate with the various credit bureaus in Canada. In this case, the person’s payments weren’t being reflected on their Canadian credit bureau and therefore their credit looked as bad as it did on the day they started. I hope this is not the case for you.
If you haven’t already done so, you should make an appointment to meet with your credit counselor and ask them for an explanation. If you have made all of your payments and you have not had any other financial difficulties (for example passing bad cheques) you should not be encountering these problems. Something is not quite right and needs to be addressed.