April 14,2009
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Protection w/o a Rip-off, Pt.2
What are you really paying for?Free credit reports: The three major credit card reporting bureaus (TransUnion, Experian and Equifax) normally charge for these. However, by order of the federal government, we're all guaranteed one free credit card report from each of these bureaus every 12 months. They're available through annualcreditreport.com and can be delivered electronically with an immediate download or can be delivered by ‘snail'. Most companies that offer these free credit card reports simply request them in your behalf for free and lead you to believe the money you pay them is used to buy these reports. Balderdash!
Those companies that offer a free 30-day trial of their product will conveniently delay your credit card reports till the 31st day just to make sure you don't back out on them and cancel before you have to commit subscribing for one year. If you do cancel on that 30th day, you'll never see those credit card reports. Beware of the deceptions before wasting much of your time by demanding a commitment that they don't ‘do you this way'.
Note here, that you can get these same credit card reports on your own and, by spacing each of your three requests four months apart. This way, you can continue year after year to continue getting free reports nonstop.
As far as cleaning up the mess if the worst ever does happen and your credit card account, this can take some time. If you have the time to do it on your own there is some relief from insurance carriers that will reimburse you for some of the lost time and incidental expenses like the many phone calls you'll have to make and all the other overhead. Of course, there will be deductibles involved. Since this is so complex, it might be better to go with one of the reputable companies like "Debix", "ID Theft Assist" or "ID Watchdog" for this.