Warning: FreeCreditReport.com Isn’t Free

By, Ashley Crimaldi

In case you haven’t heard, The Federal Trade Commission (F.T.C.) is going after company Experian (the geniuses behind FreeCreditReport.com, and those clever commercials) for misleading Americans into believing FreeCreditReport.com’s credit report services were actually free of charge. In actuality, users are prompted to enter their credit card information before receiving their credit report, and are then enrolled into a monthly credit monitoring program and charged a monthly fee of about $14.

The F.T.C. has accused Experian for misleading Americans seeking free credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com (the FTC’s website), to visit FreeCreditReport.com instead. In reaction to the supposedly “false advertising”, the F.T.C. has changed its website name from AnnualCreditReport.com to FreeCreditReport.gov to hopefully clear up any misconception. The F.T.C. has even gone as far as releasing their own parody version of the commercials to inform Americans of the scam. Check out the parody commercial here.

So who is at fault? Should Experian be punished for misleading Americans? Or should the FTC have done a better job marketing its own free credit report website in the first place? Or should credit score commercials be banned all together?

I’d love to hear from you all- were you aware that FreeCreditReport.com credit reports were not free? Have you been duped in the past in scams like this?

Moral to the story: Don’t use Free Credit Report dot com!

For more information, or to view multiple perspective news coverage on the story check out this video from newsy.com, or read the New York Times Article.