A lot of the "credits" programs are giving credits for "preserving" land that wasn't in danger of being cut down in the first place, yeah. The rare ones that are actually REMOVING carbon are so small scale - like that company that has a mechanical carbon scrubber in Iceland that then pushes it into the rock and mineralizes it there - it does what it says it does, but it's like .01% or something in the scheme of things.
Maybe if all those carbon credits paid for various programs that we know are helpful, like look at the Drawdown program and fund some of those, we might get better results, but generally yeah, with rare exception they're more of a "feel better about that carbon you just used" conscience cleaner then an actual climate cleaner.