Free Annual Credit Reports

This information may be known by most of you, however there is always "good to know stuff" that seems to slip through the proverbial crack. As such, I thought it was worth a post.

From time to time you may have buyer’s who do not know or are not sure of what their credit report files contain. On January 1st of 2005 the FACT Act was signed into law by President Bush. One of the features of this Act was to allow consumers free access to their credit bureau reports from all three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian & Trans Union). Every consumer is entitled to this free credit report once every year. Should you want to provide any of your clients with this useful information you can refer them to: http://www.annualcreditreport.com/

There is a similar website that is heavily advertised on radio and TV that is easily confused with the one listed above. That site is http://www.freecreditreport.com/. This is NOT REALLY FREE! Consumers/subscribers must sign up (fee based service) for a credit report monitoring program to be entitled to their "free credit report." It seems as though there will always be those enterprising souls who like to capitalize on the similarity of names to generate a buck or two.