Free Credit Report: No Trial, No Credit Card Needed

December 1st, 2008

The guy from the freecreditreport.com commercials has pretty much become a celebrity, although the ad offers a “free credit report” that’s not really free. If you listen to the commercial, it says at the end that the free credit report offer is valid with enrollment in Triple Advantage ™. It just so happens that this program charges a monthly fee for their credit monitoring service. It’s the same premise for all those free credit report offers that you see on TV.

Yet there actually IS an absolutely free credit report that doesn’t require you to enroll in any sort of program. Actually, it’s more than one. You’re legally entitled to one (1) absolutely free credit report (no trial, no credit card needed) from each of the three major credit reporting companies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). Do the (simple) math, and that amounts to three adbolutely free credit reports (no trial) a year. The only thing is that the companies are only required to send them to you if you ask for them.

The three major credit bureaus have all complied to the Fair Credit Reporting Act and now offer a variety of ways for you to get your free credit report with no trial attached. You can request it by mail, by phone, or online. Expect to go through a thorough process in order to verify your identity: with identity theft being at very high levels nowadays, those companies have to make sure that they’re talking to the right person before they disclose any information, especially credit reports which contain so much critical personal information.

The slowest ways to receive your free credit report (no trial) are by mail and by phone. In both cases, a 2-3 week period should be allowed for delivery. If you request it online, it will be shown to you instantly, and you can print it to go over later on. It’s reported that a sizable portion of credit reports have mistakes in them, so maybe yours does and in this case, you can start the process of having them corrected.

If you’re like the vast majority of people, there’s little chance that you need more than the free credit report (no trial, no credit card needed) that you’re entitles to by law. But like most things, it’s never all black or all white, but rather varying shades of gray. Here are a few of the circumstances where you might find it insufficient:

If you have several credit issues that are negatively affecting your credit, you might need a monitoring service to keep an eye on your credit file. For example, if you have been a victim of identity theft, a monitoring service will definitely help you.
If you need your credit scores, the federal free credit report can’t help you, because those reports don’t include your credit score. Getting your credit score is never free, so to get it you have no choice but to pay for it.
Finally, if for whatever reason, you have already received all three of the no trial free credit reports that you’re allowed for the year (defined as a twelve-month period), then any other credit report that you need will have to be purchased.