I pride myself on being able to recognize an online scam when I see one, but I was recently taken in by a website promising free credit reports, but which actually sneakily charges your credit card for a service you probably don't want. Several years ago, the Federal Trade Commission started requiring the national credit reporting companies—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion—to provide people with a free copy of their personal credit report on request. There's a web site to get your credit report: annualcreditreport.com. I've used it in the past to check my credit history and look for anymistakes or evidence of identity theft.
Last month, I decided it was time to take another look at my credit report (the FTC says you're entitled to one free report every twelve months). I couldn't remember the name of the website , so I typed in "free credit report" on Google*,. The first link was for www.freecreditreport.com. I clicked it was sent to a Web page with a bold headline stating: "America's #1 Free Online Credit Report!" It was run by Experian, one of the big three reporting agencies, which reassured me that I had come to the right place.
I clicked on the large bright orange button that said "Get your Free Credit Report & Score!" and was presented with a form. I filled it out. I hesitated for a second when the site asked for my credit card number, which it stated was "required to establish your account," but the site assured me that my "credit card will not be charged during the free trial period." Having done this before (or so I thought), I went ahead and entered the information. A shopping cart receipt indicated that the total was $0.00.
I got my credit report, looked it over, and forgot about it. A week later I was looking at my checking account register online and I noticed a $14.95 charge from a company called CIC*Triple Advantage. I didn't recall buying anything from a company with that name, so I entered "CIC*Triple Advantage" into Google. The search results made my eyes bug out of my head. This was the name of the billing entity for freecreditreport.com. The thousands of search results were full of words like "deceptive practices," "scam," "ripoff," "unauthorized billing!" and "beware!" In fact, all the top results were either from people complaining that they'd been conned into signing up for a $14.95 monthly credit monitoring service without their permission, or they were about how to cancel the service.
Angered that I had been duped so easily, I went back to the freecreditreport.com site and took a closer look. I found fine print that stated: "If you don't cancel your membership within the 7-day trial period, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership." Why didn't I see this earlier? Because the site had practically hidden this information in a powder blue box with blue text, making it almost invisible in comparison with the shiny orange "Click here to see your Free Credit Report & Score!" button.
There was no way to cancel the service online—you had to call them. It took me a couple of days to get through to the website's customer care departmentby phone (1-888-829-6560) because the phone either rang and rang or it would simply disconnect after a few rings. I finally got through to a woman who worked there. She was pleasant, and I was pleasant with her. I told her to cancel my account. She responded by reading from a script designed to a) blame me for signing up for the service, and b) persuade me not to cancel. I insisted that I was not aware that I has signed up for the service and that I wanted it to be canceled immediately. She finally consented, and sent me an email message confirming that my subscription had been canceled. But they didn't refund my $14.95. I felt that wasn't fair, so I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, pointing out that if your enter "freecreditreport.com scam" into Google, you get 83,300 search results. After a bit of back and forth with the company, I got a refund.
The lessons here?
- Read the fine print.
- Don't ever give out your credit card number unless you know exactly what the requester is going to do with it.
- If you want a truly free credit report use annualcreditreport.com, not freecreditreport.com.
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