Welcome! It looks like you're new here. Be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don't miss a thing! Thanks for visiting!

Sure they have great catchy, sing-a-long commercials, but are all of those “free” credit report services we see ads for on TV every day for real? Well, yes and no. According to Young Money Magazine, these credit reporting sites,

“require you to sign up for a monitoring service, using your credit card in order to obtain the ‘free’ report. You will be required to cancel the monitoring service within 30 days or your credit card will be charged as much as $99 for an annual membership fee. These companies count on people forgetting to cancel the trial membership and not asking for a refund.”

So, while they do provide you with one free report, if you don’t back out in time, you’ll still end up paying a pretty hefty price tag. And regardless, such a service really isn’t worth it. Because, what a lot of recent grads don’t know (or don’t remember), is that under U.S. law, every citizen is entitled to one free copy of their credit report from each of the three national credit bureaus each year.

To order your free report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com (note: this is not a scam or service site like the others, it was created by the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies), call toll-free at 877-322-8228 or complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form on the Federal Trade Commission website.

(image by creditreportsbyweb.com)
“Ask YOUNG MONEY: Can I trust free credit report offers?” [Young Money]

Technorati Tags: credit, credit report, debt, college, graduation

Popularity: 31% [?]