Yup - scammed. freecreditreport doesn't give you anything you can't get yourself. I will say that the monitoring service that zips you an email when something changes is kinda cool, but not worth the price to me.
BTW - there are many other ways to get free actual credit reports from the real credit bureaus without signing up for a service.
What freecreditreport.com gives you is known as a "fako" score. As opposed to one from FICO.
FICO invented the credit scoring model and others are imitations. A large - large majority of lenders and creditors use a model either directly from FICO or based off the actual thing. Lesser lenders and subprimes often use fako's from other companies (it's cheaper), so it really is a valid score for the low scoring folk.
What freecreditreport gets you is called an "all-in-one" report - that may or may not give you all the info. They leave bits out because not all the bureaus have the same fields. It's best to get a report via annualcreditreport.com or directly from the CRA's.
BTW - you are legally entitled to one free report per year per agency (the one you can get via annualcreditreport.com) - as well as anytime that you are unemployed, experience adverse action based on a report from the agency, and whenever a dispute is resolved that results in a changed report.
They don't know your employment status and its good to actually have that removed. Do you really want collection agencies knowing where you work? How about insurance people or those pulling your report illegally? I won't advocate lying but they really have no way to tell where you work. Also if you tell them that you experienced "adverse action" from an account that you know exists on your report - they won't know that either.
I've gone from 570ish, up past 650 now. Was a stupid kid.
It's not always the wisest move to pay really old collections either. But thats for another thread.
BTW - there are many other ways to get free actual credit reports from the real credit bureaus without signing up for a service.
What freecreditreport.com gives you is known as a "fako" score. As opposed to one from FICO.
FICO invented the credit scoring model and others are imitations. A large - large majority of lenders and creditors use a model either directly from FICO or based off the actual thing. Lesser lenders and subprimes often use fako's from other companies (it's cheaper), so it really is a valid score for the low scoring folk.
What freecreditreport gets you is called an "all-in-one" report - that may or may not give you all the info. They leave bits out because not all the bureaus have the same fields. It's best to get a report via annualcreditreport.com or directly from the CRA's.
BTW - you are legally entitled to one free report per year per agency (the one you can get via annualcreditreport.com) - as well as anytime that you are unemployed, experience adverse action based on a report from the agency, and whenever a dispute is resolved that results in a changed report.
They don't know your employment status and its good to actually have that removed. Do you really want collection agencies knowing where you work? How about insurance people or those pulling your report illegally? I won't advocate lying but they really have no way to tell where you work. Also if you tell them that you experienced "adverse action" from an account that you know exists on your report - they won't know that either.
I've gone from 570ish, up past 650 now. Was a stupid kid.
It's not always the wisest move to pay really old collections either. But thats for another thread.