Simple Debt-Free Finance

Now here’s an article that’s just too silly.

It’s from the New York Times and here’s how it starts:

The credit report you get from freecreditreport.com is no longer free, no matter what that Web address promises.

I say it’s silly because the credit report you get from freecreditreport.com has never been free!

It’s always been a trick to get you to sign up for Experian’s triple advantage credit monitoring program at a monthly cost of $14.95. That’s just shy of $180 a year!

Of course, the reason this is so heinous is because you can get a truly free credit report from all 3 bureaus once a year (using AnnualCreditReport.com), and if you stagger those reports – 1 every 4 months – you can monitor your credit yourself for nothing!

It’s free and easy to really get your credit report for free, so there’s really no reason to use freecreditreport.com.

The gist of that NYT article is that freecreditreport.com is now charging $1 for the credit reports in addition to requiring enrollment in credit monitoring. It’s all due new FTC rules:

The new F.T.C. rules went into effect on April 2, and they required sites to include a prominent notice across the top of each Web page that mentioned free reports declaring that the only authorized source under federal law for such reports is annualcreditreport.com.

Rather than include such disclosures, Experian added the $1 charge, saying that “due to federally imposed restrictions, it is no longer feasible for us to provide you” with a free credit report. And now that the report costs $1, the new F.T.C. rule would presumably no longer apply.

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