Pier 3 Condo

It wasn’t too long ago that a law was passed to allow every American to one free copy of each credit report to them per year. Since then, tons of websites have popped up all over the place claiming to offer you your free credit report. You’ve probably seen lots of commercials on television and other advertising as well. Why has it become so popular all of a sudden to give away something for free?

Most of these sites are not free. They say they are free, but they have a plan to squeeze money out of you one way or another. They boast ‘free credit report’ all over their site with usually just a small paragraph to the truth.

They will give you free copies of your credit reports, but at the same time, they will sign you up automatically for a trial period of their credit monitoring service. Usually the trial period is seven days. If you don’t cancel within that 7 days, they will charge to your card. This is why they usually ask you for your credit card information when you sign up.

I’ve heard people say that it’s easy and you get the same thing when you sign up through this service than if you signed up somewhere else and didn’t get put on a free trial. I say, why sign up for something and waste time entering your card information and calling to cancel the service when you can avoid that altogether?

Many people will say that you should always read the fine print carefully before you sign up for anything. This is true, but that doesn’t make it right for a company to try to trick you. They should advertise their service right along with the free credit report. The free credit report should be the bonus, not the other way around.

Doing it this way, people will just get upset that they were charged for the first month and not give it a try otherwise. Who knows, they could have actually signed up for the service if they were offered it first.

Sad to say, marketing takes many different forms and use many different tactics. You should always read the fine print and make sure you know what you are getting into before you sign up for anything. If they as for your credit card information for something that says it’s free, find out why.

It doesn’t sound that hard to sign up, get your free reports, and cancel the service, but you can even more easily get your free credit reports without signing up for anything. Check the links below for more info.