Free Credit Reports
[Originally posted September 9, 2005]
Here in Maryland we have had the right to a free credit report, once a year , for quite a while. I’m having difficulty finding the actual statue, but I’ve taken advantage of it once before. Companies like Experian have always made it very difficult to get that free report. Their phone system never suggests where to get it from, or allow you to speak to someone about it. I finally found someone who mentioned it on a forum to track down the website.
This whole issue has now been resolved. With the passing of the federal law, Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act), in December of 2003, the entire country gets this benefit. Plus it’s done through one convenient website. You can still call the companies individually, but I just used the website, and it was pretty easy. You can pick one or all three companies to get credit reports from.
Since we can get one report from each company once a year, I figured I’d get one now, and then get one from a different company every four months. The first one I got had the wrong driver’s license info in, so I disputed it. They got back to me in a day to let me know they deleted it. Pretty easy and painless.
Now what bothers me is that there are so many websites that offer “Free Credit Reports” If you search for it, the first site you get is called “freecreditreport.com” But this is actually a commercial site. You have to sign up for a 30 day trial to get your credit report. This isn’t what you want. Why sign up for a free trial of anything when you get it for free without it? So go to the right website. http://annualcreditreport.com. This site was created by the law, though it isn’t managed by the FTC, they do have oversite.
Go get your credit report now, and do it every couple of months to keep up to date. When we looked up Sarah’s we found a bunch of mistakes. Apparently there was another Sarah at JHU who had student loans, so some of their info got mixed up. They had her living in multiple homes at the same time, and various credit cards, and even an additional SSN. grrrr….. It took awhile, but they fixed everything after awhile.