I just wanted to check my credit score tonight so I fired up a google search and saw literally dozens of sites purporting to give me a nice free credit report. Ok doke. I go to a few sites and find the disturbing truth: none of these is truly free. Some of the sites will give me a “free” credit score IF I buy a credit report (usually 3 or 4 reports for $30 or $40) – the cheapest one I saw was a single report for $12.95. Other sites WILL give me a free report along with a “free” 30 day “trial” of the credit reporting service, but if my cancellation doesn’t get processed in the 30 days, then I get charged $79.95 or $89.95 for a year of the service, non refundable.
Now I don’t really care about the money but this is MY information. Shouldn’t I be able to access it free? This pisses me off very strongly for two reasons: first, there’s a part of me that just feels that my info should be free damnit. Second, I get a bad feeling about all the claims for a “free” report that truly aren’t free. Also the sneaky “cancel or we bill you for a year” just rubs me the wrong way.
So I don’t want to pay these jerkoffs anything. Is there any way to actually get a truly free report? If I do go for one of the “free trial” deals is there any way to actually get the info without getting shaken down?
This is a minor issue but I’m now pretty pissed off. If I give in and pay these jerks I’ll feel like the man is getting one over on me. I tried doing some searching to find a truly free site or at least some consumer protection information but my search lists are overwhelmed by those faux “free” scam sites. Please help :).
Thanks,
Dan
PS I’m not even getting into the whole issue of information security but I’ll pass on that for now. I just want to see the damn report now that I’ve started looking into it.
The only way I know of to get a free report is to apply for something (credit card, whatever) and then request a copy of the credit report they received. 4-6 weeks.
Incredible. I hadn’t realized that there was an entire industry dedicated to creating sub-prime borrowers and then exploiting their middling-to-poor status to the hilt, while trying to keep them that way. Fucking despicable.
Techbargains.com regularly runs links to ConsumerInfo.com/FreeCreditReport.com, which provides free credit reports. The catch is that they sign you up for a credit monitoring service (which you must cancel within 30 days).
I’ve never actually used this, so I can’t speak to it personally, but it seems to be fairly legitimate (which is unusual in the credit industry).
Also, if you have a friend who deals with mortgages, they might be able to get you a free credit report, too.
I believe you are also entitled to one free credit report per year from each company, but I could be wrong. Check the Fair Credit Reporting Act, or a government website on the issue, to be sure.
As to your other point, though, the credit agencies would disagree with you. This is NOT your information, it’s their information, which they compile at their own expense based on data which you have agreed can be sold to them (check out your credit card agreement, for example). Just as a marketing firm can watch everyone coming into the mall and make a rough estimate of what kind of customers the mall is getting without permission or turning over the data to everyone involved, a credit reporting agency can watch your credit history and report on it.
I can understand the other side, though–particularly since (see other thread) I’ve had problems with incorrect credit reporting myself. There’s a feeling that although this is a private industry working with my (at least theoretical) permission, that what they do is SO important to my life that I should have some access to what is going on behind the scenes and some way to force them to be honest in what they say about me (other than ludicrously impractical alternatives like suing them for defamation). That’s what the FCRA is all about. I never pursued a claim myself (my problem was only worth $600 and I didn’t think it was worth it), but I know it’s out there.
Even so, there’s no question that incorrect credit reporting (such as in cases of identity theft) is a big problem for the victims, who often have no reasonable redress. I’m not sure what the best way to solve that is. It’s one of those problems that is difficult to leave to the market, because it’s a small number of badly victimized people. Most banks would probably tell you “Look, if I can cut my research costs in half, and the downside is that I lose 1% of the people who are in fact good customers because their credit reports are wrong, I’ll take that loss.” But for the people in that 1%, it sucks ass. Tough problem.
Don’t forget that on top of that, the credit card industry has been trying and trying to get the bankruptcy laws changed. Once someone is down, they don’t want them getting back up.
Okay, I read the Consumer Reports article (the one linked off the one Supertanker linked to). At the risk of getting shellacked, I don’t think the problem is nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. The CR article essentially identifies three problem areas with loans:
Outright lies. E.g., the company that says they give you a good rate on a credit card but secretly charges you $150 a year for credit protection. I agree that this is shameful and should be stopped. But I am sure all states already have laws against these sorts of practices.
Keeping information secret. This is the big thrust of the article. The prime example is lenders not telling you your FICO score. I’m sorry, but I have zero problem with this. The article acts like this is some terrible thing, because you have no way to know your FICO score, but the bank does, so they can trick you into thinking you have to pay higher rates than the ones you actually qualify for. What utter bullshit. You know what I did when I got my mortgage, and again when I refinanced? I shopped around. The first time, I did it by phone, calling three different lenders to see what they’d give me. The second time I discovered the joys of competitve loan shopping on the Net (lendingtree.com was my favorite) and did even better. Buying a loan is just like buying any other big purchase like a car or even a refrigerator: you don’t just walk into the first store your eyes fall on and pay whatever they’re asking. You comparison shop.
It doesn’t matter whether you know your FICO score or not, because you know what loan rate the bank is offering you. Unless you think banks are involved in some gigantic anticompetitive trust–and with the number of lenders out there, I find that ludicrous–there is no problem. If you think you have good credit and some bank tells you “Oh, jeez, you were late on a credit card payment in 1998, you’re subprime and we’ll have to charge you 9%,” go to another bank, dummy. At least CHECK. If you check four banks and they all tell you you’re subprime, well, maybe you are in today’s economy (that’s the other thing I didn’t get about the CR article; the idea that all banks might put you into a category or chage you a rate worse than the one you “deserve.” Deserve in whose mind?).
Now, is it lousy of banks to quote someone a subprime or higher rate in hopes that the person will be a sucker and go for it without checking around? I guess so, but I have only a small amount of sympathy. “Caveat emptor” is something that comes along with capitalism, and the benefits of capitalism far outweigh the costs–especially since, as I said above, you don’t have to bear those costs if you’re willing to shop around a little.
Taking advantage of the vulnerable. E.g., offering high loans particularly to the elderly or the very young. I agree that kids should be protected–the article mentions marking high-rate cards to 16 year olds, which seems bizarre since AFAIK in every state a 16 year old isn’t competent to enter a contract. Putting that aside, though, I agree that minors should be shielded from predatory marketing, because they don’t know any better. The elderly, that’s a tougher call. I have sympathy, just as I do when they send money to scams or order magazines from Super Prize Sweepstakes or whatever it’s called. I realize that not all of them have families to help them (and many who do have families have families that are too apathetic or ignorant to help them). It’s difficult to walk the line between protecting an elderly person from making a bad decision because they’re losing their faculties, and just being paternalistic and telling an old person how they can or can’t spend their own damn money because you think you know better than they do what will make them happy. College kids–the other big category mentioned by CR–I have no sympathy for. Anyone old enough to be in college should be able to figure out this stuff for themselves. And if you make some bad financial decisions in college–God knows I did–hopefully that teaches you something and you’re smarter with your money when the really big purchases (like cars and houses) come along.
EDIT: Note that this is all totally separate from the idea that you should have access to what factual information is on your credit report. Obviously, a false credit report is a bad thing that you should be able to get information about. But you already can, with or without getting the FICO score.
Also, bankruptcy is another matter, too. I am not as informed as I’d like to be, but knowing some folks who have declared bankruptcy, and knowing one who got herself in way over her head but got organized and is slowly working her way out of it, my general impression is that the bankruptcy laws are too lax. There’s no question that my working-out-of-it friend is making an objectively bad decision, though I admire her for it.
Fair Isaac will now sell you your FICO score, along with some tips to improve it.
About the taking advantage of the vulnerable thing: I know in Arkansas, and a couple of other states IIRC, credit card companies now can’t solicit on campus. My freshman year (1996), the first couple of weeks of school you couldn’t walk 10 feet without seeing one.
I love the current rate structures. Banks are borrowing money at 1% right now but the home loan rates are going up anyway? Average for a fixed rate is over 6%. Thats a hell of a lot of margin the banks are skimming off the prime lending rate already. Even before you go “subprime”.
Yeah, I don’t get it. If the overnight rate is 1%, what the fuck makes the banks think it might change in the next 30 years? What assholes. Man, if only the government would seize control of all the banks. We’d get a straight deal then.
I really do think that’s too bad. I got my first credit card my freshman year of college, and I think it was a good thing. Did I sometimes do dumb things with it? Yeah, but not super-dumb, and it helped me learn how this stuff works. Also, it helped me establish a credit history early on, which was important when I graduated college and had to qualify for an apartment here in LA.
I don’t think its a bad thing per se, but most 18 year olds (and I was among them) still think money grows on trees, or comes from somewhere else other than them. I wouldn’t mind some type of manditory personal finance class for at least incoming freshman, if not in high schools.
As for the law, one of the main reasons that it got passed here was that a state senator’s kid ran up $10,000 of credit card debt in their freshman year at college (got that from a pretty good source).
Do you own a home Rywill? You ever see how much money they make loaning you money? Especially when they load all the interest in the front? Have you ever calculated the real rate the bank gets when you turn over a mortgage in 5 years instead of 30 which is what happens in the majority of mortgages? Whether a refi or a uptick in living most mortgages are not carried to term.
I “bought” a house in 99. Financed 175k. I loved seeing the paper I signed that day showing that when the mortgage was paid off I would have given the bank back 550k for that loan. Of course the kicker was that 20 years in I would stiill owe something like 130k of the principal. The first 10 years only like 8% of what I paid each month went to principal. The rest is interest. If you assume you are paying / refinancing in 5 years take a look at the real interest paid over those 5 years…its a multiplier of like 3 times.
Oh man, don’t get me started on this subject. I have been ranting about this for months!
The last time I was concerned with my credit, you were able to get one free report a month from each agency.
Skip forward about 5 years, and I have to pay for MY fucking Credit Report! How did they get this shit passed? We are talking about information that affects what I pay for car and auto insurance, whether or not I can get a position or a promotion from ground floor with many companies, and many, many other SMALL DETAILS.
This is utter bullshit. I think they should at least have to give a free one every 6 months. Fuckers.
