kadnew
New Poster
Cash: $ 0.50
Posts: 2
Joined: 17 Feb 2005
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| Get A Free Credit Report |
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If you want to get a free credit report to check out anything negative on it or anything along those lines go to the link below
http://www.aweeklyrecipe.com/cr.htm
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Fri Feb 18, 2005 8:10 pm |
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chiron
Contributing Member
Cash: $ 11.54
Posts: 49
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
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Hi kadnew. I don't have any idea who you are, and I make no claim against you nor your proposed service, if indeed this aweeklyrecipe site belongs to you - it was registered only a few weeks ago, and I decided to take a look. It is my opinion, after a brief amount of research, that you personally are quite likely a legitimate entity, though I would recommend if you're going to resell "free" credit reports, that you complete your phone number on the contact us page - it's blank at present.
I would like to note that, whether or not you are receiving funds from this advertiser (onlinecreditinfo.com), I feel it to be your ethical responsibility to better disclose that while yes, technically the credit reports are "free" per se, there is a $2.95 processing fee at the very minimum to obtain them.
More pernicious is the following no-opt-out requirement by the advertising party, which I feel is likely to not be read by some fraction of individuals who may merely looking for a "free report" to the tune of:
quote:
...at the end of my Free trial period, the fee of $89 will be billed automatically and annually at the then-current rate to the credit card listed below [etc].
For those of you out there who may wish to obtain a truly FREE credit report without all or as many strings attached, the FTC provides some no-cost instruction on how most (all by 09/05) Americans can already obtain their credit reports for free per a joint web site created and maintained by the three major credit bureaus. Note, as always, that if someone promises a free anything, you should not be required (with rare exception) to provide billing information prior to or during your receipt of that free widget.
To read more on a truly free credit report pull option, please point your browsers to the following URL >
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/freereports.htm
which will, if you wish to skip that bit of dense reading, eventually direct you to the following site for pulling your free reports:
https://www.annualcreditreport.com
Note the https above. It is a secured URL and thus clicking the link I have posted here will probably prompt that you are entering a secure site, so you'll have to click OK or whatever to view the page contents (in most browsers with default settings).
I take no responsibility for, nor have any direct affiliation with, the FTC or the site link above. I merely thought it worth posting in assistance to any visitors to this post and forum who has a desire to pull their own credit without an excess of hidden fees and/or unrecognized companies.
Best of luck to all of you in cyberland, and kadnew, I mean no personal offense to you of any kind, I apologize if I rained on your advertiser a bit, and I will be sure to try your (free!) recipes - which seem not only 100% legitimate, but sound quite tasty as well...!
Business Web Site Design | Credit Report Repair
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Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:17 am |
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papayabhai2002
New Member
Cash: $ 0.20
Posts: 6
Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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| Is is legit |
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how can we make sure they are not stelling our identity
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Wed Mar 02, 2005 6:29 am |
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chiron
Contributing Member
Cash: $ 11.54
Posts: 49
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
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Not sure who the "who" is - but if you mean the credit bureaus, they sort of are your identity, wouldn't do them much good to steal what they already fabricate. I can't speak for other links, even my own, though I try not to just toss around things I think might be scams, but the ones I posted on the FTC (they don't sell/provide reports, but they do note the other link, hence me adding that one to give you some faith in it) and the annualcreditreport.com site (the one the FTC points to, which is a joint action of the 3 bureaus) are about as safe as you'll find online.
Business Web Site Design | Credit Report Repair
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Wed Mar 02, 2005 7:25 am |
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BlankenshipFP
Money Talk Advisor
Cash: $ 79.56
Posts: 390
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Location: Illinois
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Hey, Chiron, since I consider you the Credit Guru around here, is the link you've posted above what you consider to be the best place to turn for these free reports? When requesting a report, do you choose which agency you are pulling from, or do you automatically get all three?
It seems to me that it would be to one's advantage to pull a report from company A now, review and take whatever actions are appropriate. Then four months from now do it again with Company B, followed four months later with Company C. Then next year start it all over again.
This way you can see what adjustments are being made over time, in the case where you need to request error fixes and the like. What do you think?
Jim Blankenship, CFP®, EA
Blankenship Financial Planning, Ltd.
www.BlankenshipFinancial.com
Standard IRS Circular 230 Notice Applies
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Thu Mar 03, 2005 8:36 pm |
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chiron
Contributing Member
Cash: $ 11.54
Posts: 49
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
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quote:
...is the link you've posted above what you consider to be the best place to turn for these free reports? When requesting a report, do you choose which agency you are pulling from, or do you automatically get all three?
It seems to me that it would be to one's advantage to pull a report from company A now, review and take whatever actions are appropriate. Then four months from now do it again with Company B, followed four months later with Company C. Then next year start it all over again.
This way you can see what adjustments are being made over time, in the case where you need to request error fixes and the like. What do you think?
I'm going to assume above Jim that "actions" implied disputing invalid data. As for the rest, yes, I believe that the annualcreditreport.com site is the best FREE place available I know of, and the most "safe" since it is directly monitored by the feds and is a joint offering from the three bureaus. I feel consumers would do best to get all three reports at once (more on that later), though sadly these reports arrive with no scores, at least from what I have seen/heard up through recent times.
BTW, if anyone thinks I am pushing this annualcreditreport.com site for ulterior motives, or believe I am in love with the government, etc - sorry, no dice - I dislike the CRAs overall, I dislike many creditors that use what I feel are deliberate screw-the-consumer policies, and the government itself I hold suspect above all others. But you've got to get this stuff somehow, and that somehow needs to be as low-risk to your privacy as possible.
So by "safe" I merely mean I feel it is, playing the odds, better to use the annualcreditreport.com site than to go rushing off to some third-party site that is not sanctioned directly by the bureaus or FTC. Not only will you be paying the bureaus indirectly anyway when you pull those reports, many of these third-party services rather mischieviously drop fine-print "enroll me in X for $99/yr" and so forth in their "contracts" for what you thought was a $14.95 credit grab. If it's free, they don't need your credit card, right? And if it's paid, just be danged careful that you get what you pay for (and nothing less nor more than that).
That caveat noted, the annualcreditreport site has only rolled-out to about 50-60% of the population (just guessing based on states - the eastern seaboard is screwed until September 1 2005 - the site shows the map if you're interested) so if you either must or wish to pay for reports, you might choose to go to Transunion (iirc, they offered the best pricing among the bureaus as of last week or so, and with least hassle, this per consumers I have spoken with that tried more than one) or another bureau like Experian to get a fairly low-cost reports (about $15-45 depending on what add-ons and how many reports you order) and from my perspective, you'll get more user-friendly and legible report(s) with score(s) in the process.
Usually these "all three bureau reports" are called a tri-merge or something to this tune, and they're "nice" for consumers because they have some quick-reference eye candy and less of the "111011111" sorts of dry listings (which the freebies tend to show - quite fine and legends provided, but not as quick for the average person to review on their own). For the record, I believe all three bureaus have "see a sample report" as an option before you buy a given report package.
While I recommend (for those buying reports) going right to the source unless you want "extras" beyond the reports, there do also exist a precious few third parties like myFICO or IdentityGuard (personal opinion, and I am neither related to nor paid, etc by any of the companies I have mentioned) that I feel are mostly reliable for such things. These services usually try very hard to make you buy more than just the reports, though, so unless you like the idea of notifications and so forth (for a fee - though there's nothing wrong with these services if you elect to knowingly pay for them), I'd go with the bureaus if you cannot get freebies from the annualcreditreport.com site for whatever reason.
Jim, back to your question regarding when to pull how many (freebies), I think your "get them over time" idea is a common-sense sort of idea, and it could be worthwhile for those out there who want to keep things as low-cost or free as possible. That said, the drawback to this strategy is that if the three bureaus contained the same info, then average variance in this country between the top and bottom scores when you pull all three would not be 40 points. But it is.
In other words, the bureaus usually don't all contain the same info (which is in part why there are 3 CRAs, not 1 - the presumed intent being to have a fair average from them, given one might be corrupted - though I won't go into my real feelings on some of this), so it can be problematic to get just one - e.g. I spoke with a gent recently who had two bureaus with no major problems, but one had noted an inaccurate bankruptcy on his report, killing that score compared to the other two. He was unaware of this problem report until he went to buy a home, thinking he was in fine shape - ugh. No fun - 6-12 months before you think of getting a home or something of that principal balance, I'd sure hope you'd get all three, maybe multiple times. Yeah, it sucks paying for your own reports, but it sucks a lot worse to sell your house, be closing on your new one, and find out your new address for a few months will include "Marriott" or "Hilton."
So best in my opinion to get all three so you can compare the reports, and also note, for those of you who find inaccuracies or anything worth disputing on one report, "winning" a dispute with one bureau sadly does not update the other two. Thus another reason (if you are disputing things) to get all three at once - otherwise you'll only be cleaning up one report/bureau and will still have whatever problems exist on the other two, even if it is the same problem you just squashed on report #1. I said that twice, but it's a bit confounding for some people, so excuse the blather.
The final reason, and a bit of good news is, you should only have to obtain (free or not) your reports only once if you plan to dispute anything, as the dispute process is such that the bureaus' "responses" to you (expect 45-60 days or so oftentimes) are usually in the form of no-cost new reports mailed to your residence. The response therefore may often be nothing more than a new report that (you hope) shows a few deletions of the inaccurate or otherwise derogatory info you went after. But since it's no cost, may as well have all three in hand to begin with, especially if you can get them for free.
Oh, and if you dispute something left on the new reports that arrived after your dispute letters got a response, then the cycle repeats and you'll get another new report(s) as their - the CRAs - ongoing "feedback" to you. Note that usually a score is not included in this sort of update, but you can make some guesses that things are doing better if that inaccurate 120-day late pay from last year falls off, for example, and if your score matters (going back to buying a home, say) then once you've gotten enough "done" to justify the cost in your mind, you can pull a score report again. Note also that pulling your own reports, however often, does indeed show as an inquiry, but is noted as a "soft" one, thereby not affecting your score the way having someone else (like a potential lender) pull credit on you does, and should not be grounds that I've ever heard of for suspicion by lenders, employers, etc.
Quick point regarding my lengthy response. My advice here is all intended to fall under the concept of what I consider to be "easy" advice, meaning, there are other ways to obtain reports, dispute things, I don't thrill at the idea of counseling readers here to go drop cash on monitoring services, blah blah, etc. Frankly, I think it is nearly criminal that any American should EVER have to pay to see their reports - at any time, not just once a year - especially since these reports and access to them gets sold and inquired into with or without your consent by nearly anybody who cares to look (including your new employer, etc).
So for any of the self-named consumer activists (militants) out there, please accept that my notes above are meant with good intent to help we average Americans who don't have the time, money, lawyers, experience, or energy to fiddle around for years fighting such things as a "whoops" low-harm, no-foul late pay or something that is ruining our chance to get that shiny new yacht. To this easily-agitated minority who make or agree with statements like: "who cares if you got an emergency medical service that saved your life, screw them, make them prove you owe $15k, and dispute the charge-off 500x until they give up and you get off the hook for free" - well, I can only say that yes, as with all of us, it is absolutely your full right to dispute ANYTHING on your credit reports, and as many times as you like - but shame on you for not paying a legitimate debt owed. I rather bet such self-declared activists would be severely miffed if someone stole $15k from them.
Take care all...
Business Web Site Design | Credit Report Repair
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Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:04 am |
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BlankenshipFP
Money Talk Advisor
Cash: $ 79.56
Posts: 390
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Location: Illinois
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Oh my goodness! Do your hands hurt? 
Thanks for the valuable insight. The reason I asked is because Illinois just became one of the "chosen ones" - states that can get the free reports. In the past, I've often recommended to folks that it's a good idea to get copies of your reports and review them regularly. I was looking for your input on what is the most effective and efficient way for the average person to do this.
Thanks again for your insight.
Jim Blankenship, CFP®, EA
Blankenship Financial Planning, Ltd.
www.BlankenshipFinancial.com
Standard IRS Circular 230 Notice Applies
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Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:26 am |
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chiron
Contributing Member
Cash: $ 11.54
Posts: 49
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
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Hmm, been up for three days now, mostly in IT mode and/or coding... so no, not so much pain in my fingers (numb != pain), but my head is killing me.
Sorry for the overkill, this was one of those random posts where it seemed like there were implications upon which to build some more info that could be helpful in a more general way to anyone happening upon the thread.
In simple terms of checking your reports, Jim, your advice is dead-on. Go get them, check them, and if you see problems of sufficient magnitude to be a problem, then dispute/repair them.
The repair aspect can be done by an individual, the general groundwork for which was some of the reason for my blustering, or you can use a credit repair firm, which since I am biased (see signature), I'll not brazenly over-promote here.
Business Web Site Design | Credit Report Repair
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Fri Mar 04, 2005 2:55 am |
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