Credit monitoring services provide extra protection to your financial reputation. Generally, all credit monitoring services come with a free credit report and a free credit score, giving the companies behind these services the opportunity to give customers what they want -- and even some things they don't want.
Credit Monitoring
The concept behind credit monitoring is allowing a company to review your credit report regularly and alert you if anything changes. For example, if you're signed up for credit monitoring, you'll get notifications every time an inquiry, a new account or a late payment posts to your credit report. This can help you to stay on top of potentially suspicious activity; it can also help if you're in the process of cleaning up your credit and want to stay on top of the credit bureaus.
Credit Monitoring Incentives
Free credit monitoring doesn't exist anywhere in the U.S. This is a major reason why credit monitoring services include perks, such as credit scores and credit reports in their offers to prospective customers. The idea is that people can see first-hand what credit monitoring can do for them while simultaneously getting information that would be otherwise unavailable to them.
Credit Monitoring Drawbacks
The major problem with most credit monitoring services is that they tend to be bait-and-switch operations that try to get you on a monthly subscription to a service you may not want. Once you get your score and report, the company is counting on you to forget to cancel your subscription, resulting in monthly charges to your credit card. Furthermore, the credit scores you receive aren't necessarily the most accurate since each site uses their own scoring model when calculating your credit score. The only way to get real value from your credit score is to see how one particular score changes over time, which would necessitate signing up for a credit monitoring service.
Free Credit Reports
Although many credit monitoring services advertise free credit reports as perks for registering, you can actually get your credit report for free without giving out your credit card number or signing up for a free trial of a credit monitoring service. The Annual Credit Report website, set up by the three major credit bureaus Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, provides a free credit report once a year for all U.S. citizens. However, a credit score does not come with your free credit report, which can make it hard to understand what the report really says about your use and management of credit.
0 comments:
Post a Comment