Free Credit Reports

squiffy · #1 03-02-2007, 03:46 AM

As most of you know by now from the posts of Sossman and others, you can get your free credit REPORT at www.annualcreditreport.com You can get one free report a year from each of the three agencies. So if you rotate every 4 months, you can get 3 reports a year (though each report is slightly different).

You can also get your SCORE directly at Experian through a 30 day free trial. If you keep the monitoring service it's 9.95 a month. But you can cancel if you want.

In addition, it helps to have relationships with banks.
I have a BofA account. Every now and then you can make say $25 or $100 for opening a new account and keeping it funded.

And BofA also offers a free credit report with a 30 day free trial of their monitoring service.

StateFarm Bank also offers a free credit report with a 30 day free trial in their credit monitoring service, which is run by Experian. The monthly charge after the trial is only 7.95, which is cheaper than going directly to Experian.

I also opened a Citibank e-savings account to get their $25 bonus, which has now been raised to $50. (Arghhhh!!!) They are paying 4.75%, which is lower than HSBC's 6% offer, so I only put 2K into Citi. Anyway, Citi also is offering a 30 day free trial for their credit monitoring service.

I assume that using the annualcreditreport website does not disqualify you from also taking advantage of the bank sponsored offers. But I haven't tried any of the bank offers yet. Saving them for later.

Please let us know if other brick and mortar or online banks are offering this service.

Haven't noticed anything at HSBC yet. But haven't been looking that hard.

The banks also seem to offer a lot of $25, $50, and $100 bonuses if you get approved for various credit cards with them. So a nice way to make some extra pocket change.

MainEvent · #2 03-02-2007, 05:58 PM

I have a mastercard with Washington Mutual that gives me monthly credit score updates at no cost. It's a nice little feature.

squiffy · #3 03-22-2007, 04:34 PM

Bump

Experian, Bank of America, State Farm Bank, Citibank, etc. offer 30 day free trials. You can access your SCORE online on day one. Then cancel on day two. As far as I can tell, during the free trial, your score is not updated daily, so there is no point in waiting to cancel the free trial. You won't get an update score after you first access it during the 30 day free trial. So might as well cancel right away to avoid the charge.

If you rotate among the different banks, you can probably keep getting an updated score every few months.

And you can get your FICO monthly for free if you get a WAMU credit card as noted by MainEvent.

w_gibbs · #4 03-23-2007, 02:28 AM

Just a word of caution. I wanted to get my score prior to car shopping. I signed up on a website and ended up getting enrolled in a 3-month score update service that I really didn't want or need. It was a real pain getting them to cancel it and not charge me for all three months. I thought the credit agencies would be above board, but that doesn't seem to be the case. As far as I can tell, they don't make it obvious what you are signing up for. But perhaps I am just a little slower than most folks.