“[FreeCreditReport.com] wasn’t a free site,” Chi Chi Wu<\/strong>, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center<\/strong> says. “It was a deceptive site.”<\/p>\n The FTC took legal action twice in 2005 and 2007 against Experian for its FreeCreditReport.com advertisements. As part of the settlement, the company offered refunds to impacted consumers.<\/p>\n “Experian has been, and will continue to be, in compliance with the FTC\u0092s rules regarding the marketing of free credit reports,\u0094 Heather McLaughlin<\/strong>, Experian’s vice president of public affairs said in a statement. “We remain committed to clearly and conspicuously disclosing to consumers that the free report we offer is not the free annual credit file disclosure provided by federal law, and plan to comply with the FTC\u0092s rules by April 1.”<\/p>\n Also gone starting today will be links from the credit reporting agencies — TransUnion<\/strong>, Equifax<\/strong> and Experian — on AnnualCreditReport.com <\/a>homepage, the site where consumers can get their free credit report under the law. That site does provide consumers one free credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies, once a year. Companies will also be prohibited from advertising to consumers who receive their free credit reports on the FTC site until after they obtain their report.<\/p>\n “The [credit reporting agencies] will be ready as far as complying with the new rule is concerned,” Norm Magnuson<\/strong>, a spokesperson for the Washington-based Consumer Data Industry Association<\/strong> said in a statement.<\/p>\n Today, consumers noticed a change to freecreditreport.com. Now, it\u0092s not free upfront. Consumers can\u0092t get their Experian credit report without paying a $1 fee and getting enrolled in the company\u0092s $14.95 monthly service. Once again, ANNUALcreditreport.com<\/a> is the only place where people can order their credit reports, free and clear.<\/p>\n A 2003 federal law mandates that consumers can see their credit report for free on annualcreditreport.com, which is the blueprint for the three-digit score lenders look at. However, the credit score, unlike the credit report, is not available for free. There’s also a plethora of different scores available for purchase from the credit bureaus, even though the majority of lenders use versions of the FICO credit score, from FICO, formerly known as Fair Isaac<\/strong> Corp. “Not all credit reports and scores are alike,” says Craig Watts<\/strong>, a company spokesman.<\/p>\n During a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, lawmakers and industry representatives discussed the possibility of distributing free scores to consumers, in addition to the new regulations.<\/p>\n “I think we need to take the next step,” Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times said at the hearing. “Consumers should be entitled to one free credit score per year.”<\/p>\n The bureaus — Experian, TransUnion and Equifax — counter that giving consumers free score would hurt their business models.<\/p>\n “A consumer pays a fee to have an appraiser assess the value of his or her home,” Stuart K. Pratt, president of the Consumer Data Industry Association, a trade group, said at the hearing. “Consumers will pay for a software program to produce a tax filing. No one is suggesting these services be offered for free.”<\/p>\n Sites like Credit.com and CreditKarma.com do provide free “educational” scores to consumers, but they’re not necessarily the same scores that lenders view.<\/p>\n Credit-card holders at Washington Mutual<\/strong> could see one of their TransUnion scores for free, but when the bank was purchased by J.P. Morgan Chase<\/strong> that feature disappeared. Sears<\/strong> offers free scores to its credit-cardholders. Industry experts say it’s likely that other financial institutions who purchase the scores may launch similar programs to share the scores with consumers.<\/p>\n Starting today, credit-reporting bureaus will have to work harder to ensure consumers won’t get fooled. As part of last year’s credit-card legislation, companies marketing free credit reports will have to add additional warning labels on their advertisements for “free” offers. Such ads, including ones from Experian’s FreeCreditReport.com, have filled the radio and TV waves for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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