{"id":521407,"date":"2010-04-08T18:42:02","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T22:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10004315"},"modified":"2010-04-08T18:44:04","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T22:44:04","slug":"freecreditreport-com-just-got-even-less-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/521407","title":{"rendered":"FreeCreditReport.com Just Got Even Less Free"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Between their irritating ads and misleading name, FreeCreditReport.com has been a target of Consumerist’s derision for years<\/a>. And now the “service,” which was never free to begin with, will actually cost you a dollar to use.<\/p>\n

Now, when you go the site’s homepage you’re told, “Check your Report for $1 and get your Score Free! Plus, we’ll donate your dollar to charity.” <\/p>\n

Aside from the Random CapitalizatioN in the first sentence, it doesn’t explain why they’re charging $1 for something you can get for free elsewhere. So in addition to signing up (perhaps unwittingly) for a 7-day free trial of Experian’s credit monitoring service that will cost you $14.95\/month if you don’t cancel, you’ve now donated $1 to an unnamed charity.<\/p>\n

And it gets better — that $1 donation isn’t actually a donation, at least not from you.
\nExplains the FAQ at FreeCreditReport:<\/p>\n

The $1 fee that you’re charged to see your report is an actual fee and not itself a donation. We are taking the fee and as a gesture of goodwill, donating to charitable causes on your behalf. Because of this, no receipt is provided for tax purposes. Also, because it’s a fee we have to charge applicable sales taxes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So… You have to pay a $1 fee, and possibly sales tax, that Experian then gets to write off on their own books as a charitable donation?<\/p>\n

What a bargain!<\/p>\n

I’m going to leave it to our kith and kin at Consumer Reports to have the last word:<\/p>\n

You probably don’t need credit monitoring if you order the truly free credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com. Ordering one report from each of the three credit bureaus every 4 months should give you enough information without the need for a credit monitoring service’s monthly fees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Free” credit report now costs $1<\/a> [Consumer Reports]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between their irritating ads and misleading name, FreeCreditReport.com has been a target of Consumerist’s derision for years. And now the “service,” which was never free to begin with, will actually cost you a dollar to use. Now, when you go the site’s homepage you’re told, “Check your Report for $1 and get your Score Free! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5519,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521407","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\/5519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}