(May 20th, 2008)

Q – Tell us about “FreeCreditReport.com”.

A- Everyone has seen the commercials, the cute jingles for FreeCreditReport.com. But what really is FreeCreditReport.com.
One thing it isn’t is the official site for getting your free credit report.

FreeCreditReport is owned by Experian, one of the three major credit reporting agencies. They are a for profit business. That means they would like to charge you for your credit report but, of course, the federal government now makes them give you credit reports for free.

Since they have to give away credit reports they came up with another product for which they can charge; your credit score and a credit monitoring service. Now when you visit their site they try to sell you your credit score and a monitoring membership for $15 a month. This is done through a negative option setup.

When you visit their site and obtain your credit report, you are automatically signing up for their monitoring service and they will charge you IF you fail to cancel after the seven day free trial.

Note that this is disclosed in the smaller print on their website. If you do not pay attention, you could wind up paying $15 a month for a service you may not want. The tip off is that they ask for your credit card number.

This is not illegal. Its just marketing but Experian has been in the trouble in the past with the Federal Trade Commission for not disclosing what they are doing to people who visit their site.

The real free credit report site is annualcreditreport.com.

Q - What’s our scheme of the week?

A- Phony delivery scams

We received a call from a local consumer last week; she said she received a call from Fed Ex. The caller said that their delivery man was at her apartment complex and could not get her to answer the door. He stated the address. The consumer informed him it was the wrong address. The caller asked for directions but then said they were “…trying to deliver a check. Let’s make this easy, just give us your bank account number and we will deposit the check directly.” By Now the consumer knew something was not right. She called Fed Ex. Of course Fed informed her they had no such program, depositing people’s checks directly into their bank account.

The lesson here is beware of calls from alleged delivery services telling you that they have a check to deliver. If in doubt call us but never give out your information.