Me: I live in Silicon Valley with my wife, child and cat. I have worked at Microsoft since I graduated from College, both in the Macintosh Business Unit on products such as Outlook Express, Entourage, IE, and Virtual PC and in Windows Live on Hotmail, Calendar and People. I am currently a Principal Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Social Networking team. I basically manage a team of Program Managers responsible for delivering features to support our web and client applications. I've been blogging since 2001 and like to play around with .NET in my spare time working on projects such as dasBlog (the blog that powers this site) and Send to SmugMug (an application for uploading photos to SmugMug). I blog about a number of technology and productivity related topics.
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© Copyright 2010, Omar Shahine
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What a scam. I recently had a credit card number stolen somehow, so I went to FreeCreditReport.com to check my credit report and place a fraud alert (placing a fraud alert required that I get a credit report).
However, what I did not realize is that by getting a free credit report, you are forced to also get a "free trial" of their Credit Monitoring Service.
There is no way around that.
And the only way to prevent getting a monthly charge for the service, you HAVE TO CALL THEM to opt-out.
What a scam.
Here is what they state on their web site:
However, if you only wish to receive your free credit score & report, and do not want to continue the Credit Monitoring service at $12/month, just call the toll free number provided on their site, and cancel the membership before the 30-day trial is up. This way you will be able to view your credit report and credit score at absolutely no cost.
So, let me get this straight, to actually get my free credit report, I can sign up but I have to call you to then opt out? And my guess, is that most people don't do this till they notice a charge on their credit card, which ensures that the folks at Experian actually get paid $12.95 for giving you your own information, FOR FREE.
This kind of thing pisses me off to no end. For whatever it's worth I submitted a complaint to the Attorney General's Office of California.
update: many of you have pointed out to me, in comments and in person (thanks Ben!) that the only place that you should be going to get your free credit report is http://www.annualcreditreport.com
You can see this from http://www.ftc.gov/freereports
"Important information from the Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency: annualcreditreport.com is the ONLY authorized online source for you to get a free credit report under federal law. You can get a free report from each of the three national credit reporting companies every 12 months. Some other sites claim to offer "free" credit reports, but may charge you for another product if you accept a "free" report."
Thanks to all for leaving comments about this.