freecreditreport.com Complaint

aurynjaye's Picture Reviewed by aurynjaye
Complaint
 0

www.freecreditreport.com - free credit report


Beware of freecreditreport.com . The commercials are cute and the diddies are very catchy, but they mask a very shady business practice that Experian should really be reprimanded for.

Freecreditreport.com IS NOT A SITE THAT SIMPLY GIVES YOU ONE FREE CREDIT REPORT. (For those interested, this is the correct site--you make want to actually type this in the address bar to avoid a potentially fake site:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com

According to their home page, "AnnualCreditReport.com is the official site to help consumers to obtain their free credit report...You will never receive an email directly from the Annual Credit Report Request Service.").

The irony is that Experian, which for so many years seemed to have a reputation on par with TransUnion and Equifax, is actually a sponsor of the legit annualcreditreport.com site; yet the company continues to thoroughly sully its reputation in owning the freecreditreport.com company. Frankly, I think Equifax and TransUnion need to distance themselves from Experian. But on to the reasons:

Freecreditreport.com is actually a subscription service, a fact that is obscure on those snappy commercials and only made semi-obvious on it's home page (a strong improvement considering the home page was once as obscure as the commercials). You are enrolling in a "free trial" which supposedly lasts 7 days (was 30) before becoming a 14.95/mo service. The impression, naturally, is that if you cancel at any time the billing will stop.

It doesn't.

That was my problem when my two roommates and I signed up a couple years ago. Like most people, we had heard some rumor that you're entitled to a free credit report if you're ever turned down for credit, or if you live in a state that grants its residents one free credit report each year. So when you come across a website called freecreditreport.com, you reasonably assume that's what you're getting. When we saw that it was actually a subscription service we were a little surprised, but no biggie, you could cancel at any time. So we got our reports and then cancelled. And got charged. And we cancelled again. We got charged again. I called on behalf of all of us, talked to a live person, was assured that we had been cancelled and WOULD NOT BE BILLED ANYMORE AND ... were billed again. We each called individually, (getting old, huh?) each spoke to a live rep, got assurance, and you guessed it--it was very frustrating. After six months and about $200.00 I finally cancelled my credit card and renewed it.

If you want to be deceptive, that's not good. But oh well. But when you say "do this and i'll stop flogging" and it's done but you keep on flogging, well, that's just plain dishonesty. Add the cutesy and extremely proliferating advertising campaign just makes you an outright rapist. Funny how that ad campaign started around the time people were getting a little wise and the web page *disclaimer* had to be made more obvious.

Under the "Controversy" section of Wikipedia's Experian topic:

The Florida state attorney general is currently conducting a civil (not criminal) investigation of Experian for possible violations of Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.[12] Possible violations include misleading advertising, misleading domain name, failure to honor cancellations, and failure to disclose a negative option enrollment.

In 2008, Experian violated the Federal Trade Commission rules relating to the provision of free credit reports by mandating members provide credit card information before a request is fulfilled. The Federal Trade Commission's fraud unit received several complaints regarding this tactic and has now agreed a settlement with the company.

Wikipedia freecreditreport.com article In 2005, they were sued by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive marketing tactics. They settled for $950,000 in the form of free credit monitoring for those affected and agreed not to use deceptive and misleading claims about free offers and to offer full disclosure of terms and conditions of any free offers.

In other words,

SWIM AWAY!!!

Was this review helpful to you? Register to participate by writing your own reviews.

MeasuredUp Consumer Tools

Post a reply for this review Share a Comment or Suggestion on this review
Submit a review, complaint or question to customer service

at freecreditreport.com
Create a support ticket
for freecreditreport.com
Watch Consumers's videos
for freecreditreport.com
More freecreditreport.com Reviews and Complaints See all reviews and complaints
for freecreditreport.com

MeasuredUp Company Resources

Claim this company Businesses: Claim your business name free and get alerts to new reviews
Respond to this review Companies: Respond to this customer review or complaint
Link to MeasuredUp Get the Free Customer Service Excellence icon for your website
Take the pledge Post the Customer Service Pledge
on your website




Share This Review

Bookmark/Share this review
Tweet this   Digg   Facebook   StumbleUpon   del.icio.us   Google

Comment or reply to this review


Walt says: (1 month ago)
 0
The really bad part is this. The credit scores they give you are not even accurate! If you go to the actual credit agencies your numbers will be lower than freecreditreport. So what you pay for is not even accurate.

Walt says: (1 month ago)
 0
The really bad part is this. The credit scores they give you are not even accurate! If you go to the actual credit agencies your numbers will be lower than freecreditreport. So what you pay for is not even accurate.

TB1313 says: (5 months ago)
 +1
Don't use this service unless you are really ready to be bombarded with them "begging" you to stay. They went as far as to lower the price for me to 7.95 then when I said no they finally let it go. I checked the next day and they charged my credit card 14.95 after that. I called to talk to them about it and they said they couldn't lower it to 7.95 now because they had already placed the order! BAIT and SWITCH! THIS COMPANY IS NO GOOD!!! Be very careful if you get the free report that is where they got me. I ordered at 10:30 at night and they counted that as a full day! Then when I wanted to speak to a manager they left me on hold for more than 20 minutes! CANCEL VERY EARLY TO STAY OUT OF TROUBLE!!




NEW - Optional log in with Facebook account.
Post reviews to your wall and share with friends.


*Companies: Learn more about how you could answer your customers Free

Comment on this review here:





More freecreditreport.com reviews


Similar reviews


More

[Top]

Bookmark/Share this page

This page is under construction.
It will be up and running soon with new features to make you smile more.
Thanks,
The MeasuredUp Team