X-Banker

Truly Free Credit Reports

April 18th, 2008

By The XBanker

Here’s how to really get free copies of your credit and consumer reports (including a few agencies you may not know about).

There are three major national credit reporting agencies that collect and sell reports about consumer’s financial habits. There are also national specialized consumer reporting agencies that are required to provide an annual free disclosure to consumers. Since these may collect and report different information, it’s a good idea to review all of them at least once a year.

To order your free annual credit report for Equifax, Experian or Trans Union, go to www.AnnualCreditReport.com or call 1-877-322-8228. The reports are free, credit scores are not.

Chexsystems and Telecheck both report on bounced checks and overdrawn bank accounts.

Choicepoint provides several types of consumer reports:

C.L.U.E. reports relate to insurance claims. Get a copy at www.ChoiceTrust.com or call 1-866-312-8076.

To request a copy of your employment history report from Choicepoint, call 1-866-312-8075.

To request a copy of your tenant history report from Choicepoint, call 1-877-448-5732.

MIB reports information related to applications for life, health, disability, or long-term insurance. Visit www.MIB.com or 866-692-6901. Note, if you have not applied for for individually underwritten life, health, or disability insurance during the preceding seven year period, MIB will not have a record on you.

One question I am often asked is whether it’s a good idea to stagger your requests for your free credit reports. In other words, order one from one bureau in January, the second in a few months, etc.

My answer is, “Absolutely not.” These agencies do not share information with each other and a mistake may show up on one report but not the others. If you don’t know about it, you can’t fixe it. It is essential you check them all right away. If there is a problem, or you want more frequent access, order a credit monitoring service.

Have fun!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 11:45 am and is filed under Business Credit, Personal Credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Tomas Zubicek said at April 18th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

   I would even say, that get the monitoring service is the very first thing, an entrepreneur should do, right after he woke up one morning and get struck with the crazy idea, to go on anykind of venture, which will require funding further down the road.
   It will cost you less, than dinner in “Red Lobster” and it is well worth it.
   Again, believe me, I know….

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