In the United States, credit counselling services no longer have a bad name. Credit repair counsellors who have lied to and misled their clients are to blame for this negative view of these services.
Most people say that if you can, you should fix your credit on your own. If you can avoid it, don't go to a credit repair counsellor. One reason is that you will have to share information that could be mishandled later. Credit consolidation or working with creditors to lower the interest rate on your credit cards or loans may be good options, but you should do a lot of research to make sure that it will actually help your credit and not hurt it more in the long run.
Most credit counsellors don't do much to help your credit score, but they do help you get out of debt. This is different from making your credit score better. In reality, if your credit counsellor doesn't send in your payments on time, which does happen sometimes, it could hurt your credit score. A note like "30 days late" will show up on your credit report, which you could avoid if you sent the payments yourself.
Some credit repair companies will send letters to the credit bureaus saying that the information on the report is wrong and asking that it be taken off until an investigation is done. The credit bureaus get rid of the bad information and wait for a report. The credit companies will then give their clients a "clean" report to show that their credit rating has improved. The problem is if or when these bad marks come back after the investigation.
This doesn't mean that every company that helps people fix their credit is a scam. Some agencies are reputable because they are honest. You can trust these organisations to get rid of false negative information. This is the most a credit repair service can do to help your score, though. No agency can get rid of negative information that is true, and it stays on your credit report for seven years after it was first reported. Worse still, a bankruptcy stays on a person's credit report for ten years.
It is always better to take care of credit problems on your own. Choosing this option will avoid providing personal information and you will know what your actual credit rating is.
