I don’t know about you, but I’ve had more than one of freecreditreport.com’s catchy jingles stuck in my head even though honestly their commercial never made me actually want to check my credit score. However when I did need to check my credit, they were the first to come to mind. Catchy song aside, freecreditreport.com is not exactly as free as they say, though it can be.
What do I mean by that?
You can receive one free credit report from freecreditreport.com through Experian, the company that owns the site. However it’s only free if you sign up for their credit monitoring service, and seeing all three scores costs you even more. After a trial period the service is billed on a month basis.
How could you get the report honestly free, like in the song?
You can cancel your free trial membership which includes the free credit report within the 9-day trial period. This is a simple task that just requires calling their support line, and allowing the operator to offer you a variety of deals on reduced membership offers.
How can you really get a free credit report without signing up for anything?
Visit Annualcreditreport.com. This site may not have any memorable commercial jingles, but through it you can receive one free report from all three credit bureaus once a year as is entitled to you by law rather than viewing just your Experian score. Knowing what is on all three of your credit reports is important to understanding where you really stand in the credit scale. Freecreditreport.com will not offer this for free, trial or not. You can also only sign up for freecreditreport.com’s free trial offer once receiving one report for that time, and a second updated report will cost money.
So to compare, freecreditreport.com will offer you one free credit report through Experian with signup, this signup can be canceled. It does take a phone call and can’t be done online. Annualcreditreport.com is entirely free and will supply you with one free report from each credit reporting agency, but only once a year.
Overall I’d say the best way to monitor your credit for free is to use annualcreditreport.com. However if you have reason to fear identity theft, or you know you are going to need know for sure you have good credit soon (example: I know in x amount of months I want to start looking into buying a house) I do recommend signing up with a credit monitoring service such as Freecreditreport.com that will allow you to regularly see all three scores and will alert you to credit changes.
