Type in free credit report to the Google search engine and you get nearly 68,000,000 results with the words free and credit and report. Quite amazing. This article shows the truth behind the free credit report offer and why you shouldn’t bother but instead make a little bit of an effort and get your credit report direct.
So What Happens When I Go For The Free Credit Report Offer?
Should you click on a link offering a free credit report then? What’s the angle the company is trying to sell to you? After all free is never truly free is it?
Well you’d be right to ask the question. Of course they are not offering anything for free really. They are taking advantage of your natural concern over the quality of your credit rating, specifically the contents of your credit report. They are in effect attempting to sell you a subscription to their service of providing you with updates to your credit report on a periodic basis, mostly monthly.
The Mechanics Of The Free Credit Report Offer
It works something like this:
You search for the term “free credit report” on the Google search engine.
The results page bombards you with offers relating to the opportunity to get your free credit report and tempt you with a button that says something like – click here to get your free credit report now.
You click and are take through to a page asking for your personal details (necessary of course, for identifying your credit report). No problem you think, and proceed to fill in the details. You submit your details
Next you are taken through to another page in which you are invited to fill in your payment details. Odd, you might think, given that this is a site offering free credit reports. However, you reserve judgement and complete the information.
What you haven’t clearly been told at this point is that the free part of free credit reports is actually a free trial period to a subscription service and that you have had to get through to the payment page before this is made clear to you.
Worse still you have probably had to provide your email address along with your name and address details and missed the opt out of receiving offers from partners, affiliates and other special offers they might wish to promote. Which is of course, marketing speak for getting spam galore from loan companies.
Free Credit Report – The Small Print
Read the small print and the picture comes clear – an extract from one high ranking Google search website – only given to you on the payment details page (no link given as not wishing to provide the company with free clicks):
Offer Details:
Simply click “Submit” on the next page to claim your FREE Credit Report and Score and activate your trial membership in [company name]. After your 10-day FREE trial, the membership fee of £14.95 per month will be charged by [company name] to the credit card you use today, and then automatically charged each month at the then-current monthly membership fee so long as you remain a member. Of course, you can call us within the first 10 days to cancel – you will have paid nothing and owe nothing. Remember, [company name] comes with our guarantee – you can call to cancel at any time and you will no longer be charged.
All suddenly becomes clear. The free turns out to be not so free, in order to get your free credit report you have to sign up, agree to pay, then cancel if you decide you don’t want it. In this case, if you don’t cancel before 10 days are up you commit to paying a hefty £14.95. Pretty steep.
I Still Want My Credit Report – What Else Can I Do?
You see the thing you perhaps don’t realise at this point is that the credit reference agencies, of which there are three principal ones in the UK are required to send you your credit report for a mere £2 each time. The £2 is a fee to cover the administrative effort in locating, printing and despatching your credit report. If you did these each and every month it would cost you only £24 per annum. Less than two months of subscription to the aforementioned company (although of course the company was not mentioned).
What these companies are trying to do is to encourage you to set up a standing order, or in most cases a direct debit to their subscription service and then forget about it. Each month they automatically produce, at very little cost to themselves your credit report, which they most likely despatch to you by email, again an extremely low cost method of distribution. Once you are on their database therefore you become a big profit generator for them. The main cost to these companies is in attracting new subscribers, which is highlighted by the expensive and slick website that is designed to attract you in.
Regularly obtaining your credit report is an activity worth undertaking, especially if you have undertaken the process of credit repair. Getting sucked in to a paid subscription in order to get the information in your credit report, on the back of a claim that appears to offer you a free credit report is not a sensible course of action.
In order to get a copy of your credit report you should contact one of the following credit reference agencies. It is probably easiest to do this via their website, but their contact details are as follows:
Callcredit plc
Consumer Services Team
PO Box 491
Leeds
LS3 1WZ
Tel: 0870 060 1414
Experian
Consumer Help Service
PO Box 8000
Nottingham
NG1 5GX
Tel: 0870 241 6212
Equifax plc
Credit Advice Centre
PO Box 1140
Bradford
BD1 5US
Tel: 08705 143700
Easy really. In fact almost too easy – a fact the Free Credit Report vendors don’t really want you to know.
Free Credit Report – Summary
So don’t fall for the free credit report offers. Much better advice would be to make a little bit more of and effort, deal direct with the credit reference agencies (avoiding their own hooks to sign you up) and save yourself a hefty sum by doing it yourself.
