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| FreeCreditScore Star Ratings |
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Whether you know it or not, credit is a major part of your life. You need it to buy a car, you need it to buy a house – sometimes you even need it for utilities. Since credit is so important and can very easily be ruined, it is essential that you keep an eye on your credit reports. There are several companies that offer this service, one of which is FreeCreditScore.com. We recently researched this site for our credit report website reviews. Here's what we found out...
What’s New with FreeCreditScore.com?- Free printable credit report.
- Monitoring of all 3 of your credit reports.
- Free Experian credit score.
StarReviews' Favorite FreeCreditScore Feature:
We really liked that we were able to sign up for a free 7-day trial. Although credit monitoring doesn’t start for a few days after, we were able to get a small preview of the service before we allowed our credit card to be charged for the membership fee. The consumer learning center is our favorite feature of the FreeCreditScore website. Consumers can educate themselves on how to manage their credit, how to read their credit reports and what credit scores mean and how they relate to your interest rate when applying for credit. Consumers can also learn about the importance of acquiring and maintaining a good credit history and how to consolidate their debt and the ins and outs of the new credit card act of 2010.
The FreeCreditScore Experience:
Claiming themselves to be “America’s #1 free credit report,” FreeCreditScore is a division of Experian, which is one of the three major credit bureaus. You may have seen their commercials featuring a guy with his guitar singing about how his life would have been better if he would have just checked his credit report.
Well, this guy is right. You can avoid getting turned down for credit by keeping an eye on your credit score – nipping any inaccuracies in the bud before they blossom into a major crisis. At FreeCreditScore, that is exactly what they allow you to do. The Triple Advantage program will monitor your credit reports (yes, all three) and let you know of any changes for a nominal monthly fee. Plus, you will get to see your Experian credit score for free as well (note that this is not the same as your Experian FICO credit score.)
The first thing we noticed when we visited FreeCreditScore.com was the large image of the guy from the commercials. Under him was the site’s information about signing up for a 7-day credit monitoring trial for the Triple Advantage program and then the $14.95 you will be billed if you don’t cancel within that time.
We thought that this was very direct of FreeCreditScore, since many sites that begin to bill you after a short trial membership will hid that information (probably in hopes that you won’t cancel in time.) This information was right there next to all of the other information and wasn’t even hidden in fine print at the very bottom of the page.
What we did find out via the fine print at the bottom of the page is that credit monitoring of our Experian report will take 2 days to begin and monitoring of our other two reports (TransUnion and Equifax) will take 4 days. Remember, our trial period was only 7 days long, so we only got 5 days of monitoring on our Experian credit report and 3 days of monitoring of our TransUnion and Equifax reports during that time. We even found that in some cases, monitoring cannot begin within the trial period. We did have 9 days after enrollment to cancel, however.
FreeCreditScore Features:- 7-day trial for Triple Advantage monitoring program.
- Monitors all 3 of your credit reports.
- Free printable credit report.
- Free Experian score.
FreeCreditScore Pricing:
You receive a free 7-day membership to the Triple Advantage program offered by FreeCreditScore.com. Once this small period is up, your credit card will be charged $14.95 per month, until you cancel.
FreeCreditScore Customer Service:
You can contact FreeCreditScore.com by email and they also have a small FAQ section to help answer any general questions about the site or membership. We found email support to be very responsive, getting back to us the same day we sent in our question. While we'd have liked to see some phone support offered, we really can't complain about same-day email service.
Upside:
- Get a 7-day free trial
- View your free credit report immediately
- Get a free Experian credit score.
Downside:
- Monitoring may not fully begin until day 4 of your 7 day trial.
- No Phone Support
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