Overview
Credit Counseling of Arkansas is a credit repair firm based in Fayetteville, AR. They opened for business in 1995 and offers many credit repair services to their customers. These services focus on different types of education and information to allow consumers to make informed credit decisions.
Pros
The first advantage they have is they have a tremendous focus on consumer education. This gets them points in our review because consumer education is one of the strongest indicators that a credit repair service’s clients will be able to stay out of credit trouble in the future. Moreover, the wide range of specific types of education offered by CCOA will be helpful to consumers in a number of different circumstances, including bankruptcy, home buying, student loans, budgeting, and more.
Credit Counseling of Arkansas has the additional benefit of their website is clear and easy to use. Many credit repair companies have websites that either don’t have much information, or hide information in random, hard to find locations. Clean, professional websites are strongly aligned with better customer satisfaction and reviews in our research, and gets the company a few extra points in our rankings.
The last pro we’d like to note is that they have good reviews for customer service, with many complimented the speed of response, quality of answers, and professionalism of that aspect of the business. This is especially important for credit repair companies because many customers don’t understand the credit, credit reporting, or credit repair processes.
Cons
Credit Counseling of Arkansas does have some downsides, for example, they don’t file disputes on behalf of customers. This is in stark contrast to most credit repair companies that focus on disputing negative and inaccurate information that can severely undermine a consumer’s credit score.
Credit Counseling of Arkansas has another problem, namely that they don’t have a clear description of their rates and fees on their website. This forces customers to reach out for more information, which is a sales tactic. The result is that consumers may lose valuable time in meetings or on the phone only to find out that they do not like or want the services the company has to offer. This lack of transparency also corresponds to lower customer satisfaction ratings and costs the company points in our review.
Credit Counseling of Arkansas can also improve in that their website, while offering lots of good information, is a bit clunky. Users have to go through several levels of links to get to the information they are looking for, and this can turn off some customers from perusing their services.
Verdict
Credit Counseling of Arkansas is a good choice for credit repair services. The focus on education is something that we look for in the best credit repair companies. While they rise out of the middle of the pack, the lack of transparency and the fact that they don’t seem to file disputes on behalf of their customers keeps them out of our top credit repair services.
