The Internet is littered with free credit report offers and most of them want to give you a free credit report but they don’t blatantly disclose that you are paying for a monthly service along with the free credit report.
The search term “Free Credit Report” is an expensive one on Google, with advertisers paying upwards of $14.00 per click to be number one in the advertisers section of the search results. It’s big business and everyone wants a piece.
The Federal Trade Commission has long wanted these types of sites to provide more blatant disclosures to consumers as to exactly what they are paying for, but resistance stands forward and the consumers often don’t realize they are being charged after they get the free credit report.
Senator Schumer has a very simple fix for this. He says give the consumer the free credit report first- without asking for their credit card. After they receive it completely free (as advertised) they can then opt in for the monitoring service at a monthly fee.
What a concept! This would certainly help with all the confusion and reduce the number of chargebacks the credit providers must deal with, however it will certainly decrease sales.
According to the New York Times the senator said;
If these companies want to say — or sing for that matter — that they are giving people free credit reports, then they can’t charge people $15 a month, simple as that,” Mr. Schumer said in the release. “For years, these companies have said with a smile that they will provide a free credit report -– even though the government already requires a credit report be provided for free every year -– and then suddenly, months later, consumers get a bill in the mail for their credit-monitoring services. My plan would finally bust up this scam and give consumers some honest choices.”
Annualcreditreport.com offers consumers a free credit report from all three bureaus once a year and yes, its really free. The FTC and the Senator think that should also be more obvious on the websites of credit providers so that consumers may make a wise choice. Perhaps more disclosures in bigger bolder font and obvious words like “with trial” should also be implemented.
If a person can use AnnualCreditreport.com for their free credit reports and a monitoring service like Lifelock if they so choose to, its much cheaper. The bottom line is you are paying for continual monitoring with most of these services and you may not need it. At least with Lifelock, you know exactly what you are paying for and there is no smoke and mirrors.
The senator is looking to introduce legislation to force these changes if the FTC is unable to get cooperation from the credit report providers.
This months deal of the day is definitely going to 
