Where To Get Free Credit Reports And Free Credit Scores

Quite a while back I gave you some places to pull your credit reports online, for free.  Yes, I said FREE!  There has been a change and I have another place to tell you about so I thought it would be time to give you this information again.

The first place you can get copies of all 3 of your credit reports, once a year, is from annualcreditreport.com but it does not have your scores.  You will need to answer questions about some things about yourself that may be on your credit report in order to get each of them. The link to each of the credit bureaus takes you off the site temporarily.  The best way to get them through this site is to pick one, and start to get your report.  If you don't know the answer to the questions, stop and go back and try the next one. When you get questions you know that you know the answers to, proceed and get your report. Then save a copy of it to your computer.  You will use this report to help you answer the questions you'll get when you go back to get the other 2 reports.  Each time, save a copy to your computer so you have it, since you won't be able to keep logging in all year.

The next three places are also free and they ask you some questions, but they give you your credit scores. Just remember, these are NOT FICO scores, they are Vantage scores or something similar.  They are what we in the credit repair industry call FAKO scores.  These are NOT the scores lenders use, but they at least give you somewhat of an idea what your FICO score is. Unfortunately, sometimes the scores can be off by 20 points or more, sometimes higher and sometimes lower than your true FICO score, which IS the scoring model that lenders use.

Credit Karma.  creditkarma.com gives you a report from TransUnion.  It is my least favorite because so far, I have not been able to save a report in a good format from them.  To me, its kind of funky. But, it updates every single month, so its also kind of like a free credit monitoring service.  

Quizzle.  quizzle.com used to give you a free credit report from Experian.  But, in mid January of this year (2014), they changed to Equifax.  I like this report.  It looks good, easy to read, and you can easily save a nicely formatted report to your computer.  It updates every six months, so its not as good of a monitoring service as CreditKarma, but, hey, its free!  You can get a paid version that will update every month, if you want to go that route. But, there are lots of credit monitoring sites you can use, many of them being owned by Experian. They can range from $12.95/mo to $30/mo usually.  The more expensive ones, if you prefer to use them, just call first and ask them to reduce the price since you can get the monitoring service cheaper somewhere else, and they usually reduce down to about $15/month for you.

Credit Sesame. creditsesame.com gives you a free credit report from Experian.  I have to admit, I have never used this, but I probably will soon, just to see if its every bit as good as they claim.  They say you can get your Experian report free and your Experian (think Vantage) score free every single month. They claim to have free credit monitoring every single month too.  Now if these things are true and if you can save a nicely formatted report to your computer, then this would be my favorite.  Think about it. Free report and score, free monitoring every single month, why would you want to pay for monitoring somewhere else? (UPDATE:  CreditSesame SUCKS BIG TIME!  It's a huge waste. You don't get squat for free except a fake score and the opportunity to be bombarded to buy services or apply for cards, etc. Stick with the free Experian report you get from annualcreditreport.com.  No score but at least you can see what is on your credit!!)

The only thing that's left to find is a free credit analyzing tool.  Many of the paid monitoring sites have them, but I don't know if these 3 free sites will ever give it for free.  We'll have to keep our fingers crossed.  These tools are fun to play with because they show you what to do to increase your score by inputting different scenarios, like removing collections, removing balances, adding credit lines, etc.  These are very handy to have so you can set your sights on a credit goal and it will show you how to get there.

Well, hopefully you enjoy and can use this information.  Get your free reports, save them to your computer, and if you want some help with your credit repair efforts, send me an email or call me. Your reports will be super simple to email over so you can get going on your fresh start right away!

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Credit Bureaus Break The Law And Fight Your Credit Repair Efforts

I've been wanting to talk about this for a long time now.  I have been very successful in my efforts to help people clean up their credit reports for many, many years now.  I tell people that it used to be fairly easy.  I would examine the credit reports, find the errors, find the information that was negative, write letters to the collectors, creditors, and bureaus, and within a couple months, most of the items would be removed.  I could look at a credit report and tell the client, this will easily come off, this will take a few letters, this might give you some trouble, and this might not ever come off. I knew how to remove pretty much anything negative on credit reports, and any inquiries or personal information that the client wanted off.  You see, I know for a fact that no company has to leave any information on anyone's credit report for 7-10 years.  In fact, none of it has to ever be reported at all.  There's no law that requires any company furnish information about a consumer to any credit bureau.  But, that's not what they will tell you!  And its not so easy to get good results all the time anymore.

When I say "they", I mean the credit bureaus, creditors, collectors, the FTC, and plenty of website owners, bloggers, article and editorial writers, any of them that just regurgitate the lie that bad credit has to stay on your credit  report for years and years and only time will heal.  They love to say if it belongs to you, even if its negative, it has to stay on.  Now, I can give a pass to the writers that are just incompetent egomaniacs striving to justify their self acclaimed "expert" status.  They're lazy and haven't bothered to really research the laws on the subject, but the rest of them "in the business", they are flat out, just BIG FAT LIARS!  They know full well or should know full well, that these claims are a load of crap.

In recent years, the industry folks that we must communicate with, have made it so much more difficult to clean up the credit reports.  There is a push back against obeying the law by these lawbreakers. They don't seem to care that they have no proof, they've committed fraud, they've allowed errors or false information to make their way onto consumer credit reports and stay there.  They have found that they can make so much money even while breaking the law, its more profitable to keep breaking the law and hope that the consumer gives up.  In fact, they are so twisted in their games, that collectors and creditors are coming out of the woodwork and suing consumers a lot more often now and issuing 1099-C's without proving squat, that my mind is boggled.  They sue just because most people won't or don't know how to respond and they get default judgments.

Credit repair is not as simple anymore as just writing letters and stuff comes off the credit report.  Credit bureaus are in flagrant opposition of the law and they know it, but they seem to think that if they keep spewing lies, and bloggers and self proclaimed "experts" keep repeating it enough, the consumer is stupid enough to believe it and accept that their reports are just going to have to stay bad for 7-10 years.  Consumers aren't stupid!  Some may be lazy. Some may not have very good research skills or access to a computer to study and learn, or a library with relevant information, but my readers aren't stupid and they're consumers.  You aren't stupid because you kept looking for answers. You're on this blog learning the truth. You didn't just accept their lies. You knew in your gut that what you've been told is not the truth. You kept looking till you found someone who would confirm it to you.

I want to share a segment that 60 Minutes did on credit bureaus. After the video, I've got a link to Experian's response.  What a crock!  I'll make a few comments after the video about the video and about their response.

First I have a comment about some claims made in the video.  There is No Way I believe only 40% of consumers have errors on their reports. Maybe more like 94% would be closer to the truth. I find it funny that the FTC claims there is only 1 out of 5 consumers with "an" "error" on their report.  I think the operative words in his statement are "an" and "error".  He could have dropped the word "an" and said "errors" instead of "error" and then it would have been more than his claimed "1 out of 5".  This is complete spin.  He could have also used the phrase "obvious errors" and been more accurate, because without actual investigations, they cannot "accurately" determine how many errors there actually are.

Now, here is a rebuttal by Experian. (Read my comments before you click on the link so you can see what I'm talking about). http://www.experian.com/blogs/news/2013/02/11/60-minutes/

This is comical.  They falsely claim they are 100% in compliance with the FCRA. What a big load of BS! Even worse, I think every single person and company doing credit repair should join together and file a huge class action lawsuit for their slander.  They have the gall to insinuate that we are all scammers and commit fraud with their statement, "...the result of dispute requests from fraudulent credit repair companies who attempt to scam consumers into disputing accurate data..." which clearly shows how much they hate consumers who attempt to clean up their credit and anyone who attempts to help them or hold the bureaus accountable and compliant with the law.

You can also see by their statement, the itty bitty section I quoted, that they continue to spew the lie about negative information if accurate, needing to remain on the credit reports.  Well, I'm no dummy and I don't think any of you are either. They're not going to fool us by trying to phrase their false claims into a sentence that has the potential to sound factual. I'd rather research the law and rely on what that says, any day, over what any bureau rep or one of their lobbyists, tries to force me to believe.

So, though its harder now and takes longer, credit repair does work. We need to use laws against them. We must continue to hold their feet to the fire. They tell the truth that you can repair your credit yourself but that's about the extent of their honesty. Sometimes people don't want to handle that burden all by themselves.  Most of us who help others fix their credit do so with a good heart and a desire to help others.  If you would like help with your credit, I would love to help you. You will see that I do have a heart for helping others.  You can call me and talk to me or email me and I'll respond.  My contact info is up on the top right corner under my picture.  You can also leave a comment below if you like this post or I've helped you with your credit.  If you have questions, please email me as well as posting a comment.  That way, others with the same question will get the benefit of my answer but in your email, I can be a lot more specific for your needs.

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