Debtors with substantial overdue or past due payments and large amounts of debts look to agencies and bureaus for assistance, often to debt elimination companies. Debt elimination companies are sold as services that operate to contract with current consumer debtors as a third party client. Debt elimination companies usually charge an administrative fee plus a monthly service fee for processing credit and payoff transactions.

Debt settlement companies attempt to work with agencies holding the contracts for credit card, merchant, and financial debt to reduce payments, suspend interest accrual, arrest repossession actions, and delay or eradicate legal or court appearances for debt settlement. Debt settlement companies can get multiple charge offs and judgments as well, allowing them to keep excess funds.

The relationship that such debt settlement companies maintains with the various credit card companies, financial institutions, merchants and credit unions supposedly allows for greater facility in the debt settlement companies reducing portfolio and estate debt better than a single consumer.

Companies operating offshore or from banking resources outside of the United States or UK should be analyzed carefully before financial debt information or credit or identity information is transferred.  Debt negotiation companies should be staffed with individuals skilled in acknowledging which companies are likely to respond to attempts to negotiate a debt.

Many debt settlement companies are in fact the same entity as debt debt elimination companies and debt consolidation bureaus. Renaming of these companies has taken place due to heavy awareness in the financial community and among the consumer public that many such debt settlement companies are fraudulent. Many such debt elimination companies simply amass enough funds form the consumer to pay off the debt.