Perhaps you’ve caught yourself humming along to the jingle in that pirate commercial for FreeCreditReport.com. It is a catchy tune, but does it really offer a free credit report?
Not exactly.
Sign up and you’ll agree to be billed $14.95 per month until you cancel. There is, however, a seven day free trial period during which you can view your full credit reports AND your scores from all three major credit bureaus: TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. You must cancel your seven day day free trial within nine days to avoid being billed. (We don’t know why they don’t just call it a nine day free trial, either.)
So, the use of the word ‘free’ is a bit dubious here, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a great product for people who are about to apply for a mortgage or those who are actively trying to clean up credit reporting mistakes and boost their credit scores. As you may know, the three credit bureaus are now legally required to provide you with a completely free copy of your credit report once every twelve months, which you can order at AnnualCreditReport.com. However, these reports take up to fifteen days to be delivered to you and if you want to make any changes to your reports, you’ll need to either wait another year to get the reports again or pay to view updated reports…via a site like FreeCreditReport.com.
Furthermore, your free annual credit reports will not include your credit scores, which change frequently and are what lenders primarily use to determine if they will approve your loan application and what terms they will provide. FreeCreditReport.com provides you with your scores from all three credit bureaus, so you can monitor improvements as you clean up credit report errors and make progress towards paying down your debt.
We don’t love their use of the word ‘free’, but FreeCreditReport.com does provide a worthwhile service to those who are making an active effort to boost their credit scores.