From Everyday Cheapskate: http://www.cheapskatemonthly.com
Get Your Free Credit Report
"Everyday Cheapskate" is Mary Hunt`s daily newspaper column,
syndicated to approximatley 550 newspapers around the country.
Get Your Free Credit Report
It’s been a year since the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act
(FACTA) became law. The law, packed with new protections for
consumers provides that every person in the U.S. is entitled to
receive one free personal credit report each year from each of the
three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion through
a centralized source. Due to the enormity of this national giveaway,
the bureaus were granted permission to roll-out free credit reports
by regions:
Dec. 1, 2004: Western states; March 1, 2005: Midwestern states; June
1, 2005: Southern states and Sept. 1, 2005: Eastern states. Until
your region becomes active, unless you live in the handful of states
that offer free credit reports (Colorado, Georgia, New Jersey,
Massachusetts, Maryland, or Vermont), you’ll need to pay as much as
$9 to look your credit record.
There are three ways you can gain access to your free reports:
Internet: AnnualCreditReport.com (the only service the bureaus have
authorized for requesting your free annual report) will allow you to
request, view and print one, two or all three of your free credit
reports quickly via this secure Internet site. I live in the West and
I can report this site works well. The process is quick and
efficient. I had one of my free credit reports printed within 7
minutes of arriving at the site.
Toll-free number: (877) 322-8228
Mailing address: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box
105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.
Allow 15 days to process phone and mail requests.
Credit bureaus are for-profit corporations raking in billions of
dollars each year selling consumer data. They sell your information
for marketing purposes. That explains many of the unsolicited offers
and piles of junk in your mail box. (You can opt out at 1-888
567-8688 by the way.) These bureaus also gather credit and other data
on all adults in the U.S., occasionally a child or pets from time to
time and that always makes for a funny story. They compete with one
another to sell copies of our reports to us. At a minimum cost of $9
a pop, you can imagine the loss of revenue they are facing as free
reports become available region by region.
But they sell more than just credit reports. They sell credit
monitoring, credit scores, 3-in-1 credit profiles and on it goes.
This will not change. The FTC has given the bureaus permission to “up
sell” us when we request a free credit report. Unless you are
refinancing or applying for credit you need to view your credit score
only occasionally (once a year at the most). You can monitor your own
credit report. My advice is to just take your three free reports
(stagger them so you get one every four months) and to not fall for
offers of add-ons.
How to interpret the information in your reports and dispute
inaccuracies (if any) will be topics for a future column. Stand by.
Copyright © 2004 Mary Hunt
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