Used to pay $40 a pop for credit monitoring to catch errors on my report

Now I just check my credit directly through the bureaus' free sites once a month after I caught a $2,500 collections error from an old apartment complex that sat for 6 months before I saw it, anyone else switch from paid to free and find stuff faster?

5 comments

5 Comments

evan_davis10d ago

Paid $480 a year for credit monitoring once and found exactly zero errors in 3 years. Switched to the free annualcreditreport.com site and caught a wrong address and a closed account still listed as open within the first 2 months. The free sites let you pull from all 3 bureaus every 12 months so you can stagger them every 4 months and basically monitor for free year round. Those paid services are just preying on peoples fear when you can do the exact same thing in 10 minutes once a quarter.

emma_garcia11d ago

$40 a pop" is highway robbery for something you can do free in 5 minutes.

willowr9611d ago

My local place tried charging $35 for a basic oil change and tire rotation last month... exact same stuff I can do in my driveway with a $10 socket set. Like @emma_garcia said, that's insane when YouTube shows you the whole process in 4 minutes. They're banking on people being too lazy or scared to get their hands dirty.

the_robin10d ago

Is that $40 per month or per check? Because either way you're getting ripped off when the free tools are literally just as good (if not better since you can spread them out like evan said). I started doing the stagger thing last year and it honestly takes less time than I used to spend logging into the paid service. The whole "you get what you pay for" thing doesn't apply here when the free version is the exact same data from the exact same source.

tessa_carr10d ago

Wait, $40 per check? Like every single time they run it? That's insane, I didn't catch that part. @the_robin you're totally right, that's a straight up scam when the free options are basically the same thing.