When You Say Free Credit Report, It Should Be Free
from the just-saying dept
We already know that the various credit report companies think that being forced to give you access to your own credit report for free is un-American, and that they’ve been using the required free credit reports to trick people into paying for expensive subscription services (not all that different than what some fake credit reports are doing). However, it looks like the FTC is finally cracking down on the practice. It has forced one site to cough up nearly a million dollars for misleading people into believing they were getting a free credit report, when they were really signing up for an $80/year annual membership.
Comments on “When You Say Free Credit Report, It Should Be Free”
No Subject Given
Here’s an easy trick for all you noobs who want a free credit report:
Don’t give them credit card info.
Re: No Subject Given
Don’t give any of those bastards you Credit Card info….. vultures
Free Credit Report
Everyone is entitled to a free credit report once yearly, once withing 90 days of being denied credit, once after being denied employment, and at a few other times that I cannot remember.
There really is no reason to use the “free” credit report systems. There should never be a time when you say to yourself “I need to know what my credit is and I need to know now, because I have no idea.” That shows irresponsible credit usage.
Of course, those free reports don’t include a “credit score” that rates you compared to others, but then, that tells you nothing anyways.
Birds
Industries built on sham to begin with, tend to attract more of the same. The practice is in line with the ethics of the industry anyway. Birds of a feather..
if these companies, which are responsible for the ruination of countless lives (esp now that credit reports are used for job hiring), want to track their unsuspecting victim’s activities, then at the very least it should be 100% free for a person to obtain as many reports on themselves as possible (not just one per year).
these companies are getting rich by peddling information they have gathered about people by spying on them. certainly the victims at least deserve to see what exactly the companies have gathered about them. charging a person to see what a voyeur has spied about them is a double injury. obviously they can earn more than enough money peddling the information they gather, at least force them to give it away to the victims for free.