One of the most popular posts I’ve written was called freecreditreport.com - complete scam, complete rip-off.

Experian, the dishonest credit reporting agency behind freecreditreport.com, is a company I have taken pains to avoid giving any of my hard earned money to for several years now. You can be sure nothing about the site is free, and Experian’s lying phone operators will use any means possible to ensure that the company can continue ripping you off for $12.95 per month as long as possible.

If you are looking for alternatives to freecreditreport.com that do not advertise themselves as free, the best site I have found is called myfico.com. myfico.com is owned by Fair Isaac.

Their products page clearly outlines what they offer as far as credit monitoring. I chose the ScoreWatch product and so far, I am very pleased. I was easily able to find and dispute numerous errors on my Equifax credit report and I am now awaiting the outcome of those investigations.

The ScoreWatch system is much easier to deal with the complicated 30+ page credit report that I was sent in the mail. It let me find the errors and auto generated a letter of dispute on my behalf which I was able to drop in the mail. ScoreWatch also had a feature I liked a lot that suggested actions I could take to improve my credit rating over time. ScoreWatch doesn’t help much with problems related to Experian or TransUnion but the MyFico site has products that cover all three of the major credit reporting bureaus.

Perhaps the best part of the MyFico.com web site is the forums area where real people discuss their real credit problems and how they have fixed or are fixing those issues. The MyFico forums area is a wealth of knowledge if you have the time and patience to sort through all the terminology and anecdotal material.

Those dirty bastards behind freecreditreport.com, whoever they are, are slick. I’ll give them that. When I hear that guy singing about his posse’s legs sticking to the vinyl in his cheap car I can’t get the stupid song out of my head.

The truth though, is that freecreditreport.com is a scam. The irony is that freecreditreport.com claims it will protect you from being scammed. I suppose that if you are the sort of person who would hire a criminal to protect you from other criminals then freecreditreport.com is a good choice. Just remember it isn’t free.

The company uses false advertising to get you to do a “free” check on your credit and then robs you of $12.95 a month and hopes you won’t pay careful attention to your bank or credit card statement. The company will try and pressure you when you call to cancel the monthly charge. They don’t want to let go of that money for nothing.

The charge on your bill will look like this:

I’ve had this company rip me off twice now. The first time was my own fault and the second time I’m not even sure how they decided it was OK to start billing me again. I’m sure they are working on new and more insidious ways to steal a few more dollars out of my account. Experian owns this little ripoff business. If you ever have the chance to avoid doing business with the company, I would encourage it.

Just before I left Iraq, I wanted to check my credit score for free on-line. And that’s when I made a mistake. I was dumb enough to use freecreditreport.com to check my credit score. The site is owned by Experian, one of the big three credit reporting agencies, so I figured it was safe to give them a credit card number to “verify” my identity. Boy, was I wrong.

Three months after my mistake, I noticed a charge on my credit card that looked like this -

I didn’t remember signing up for a monthly subscription to anything, so I called the number and was surprised to learn that by trying to get my one free yearly credit report as authorized by federal legislation, I had inadvertently “signed up” for a $13 a month service that would keep me apprised of my credit score moment by moment. That is a service I simply don’t need.

I immediately told the representative, who sounded like she was at the bottom of the ocean somewhere off the coast of the Philippines that I wanted to cancel the account and that I wasn’t even aware I had signed up for a monthly fee based service. All she wanted to do was argue about how valuable the service is to me. I find it highly insulting that a large company like Experian, a company that keeps track of millions of people’s financial data without their consent, is also in the business of trying to rip those people off. Experian trains their customer service representatives to treat callers like cowardly idiots who aren’t intelligent enough to make their own decisions about how much money they want to spend on a “free” monthly-fee based service.

Experian has earned my ire for life. Any opportunity I have to steer people away from doing business with Experian or any of its subsidiaries will be my pleasure. I am warning anyone who reads this blog entry to stay away from any services provided by Experian. They are unscrupulous rip-off artists who practice misleading advertising techniques and purposefully make it painful to cancel their completely useless service once they have tricked you into “signing up.” I’m sure that eventually, Experian will face a class-action lawsuit because of their unsavory business practices, but for now, make sure you steer clear of freecreditreport.com. Instead, use annualcreditreport.com. And boycott Experian whenever possible.