by Jackie Holmes

Created on: March 21, 2009

To put is simply, yes your credit report is really free, but only if you go to the right place. In 2003 a federal law was passed, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act of 2003, which gave every American citizen the right to obtain a free copy of their credit report once every 12 months. In order to obtain your free copy simply go to www.annualcreditreport.com where you will be able to quickly and easily view your credit report from each of the three recognised credit bureaus, these being Trans Union, Equifax and Experian.

Alternatively you are able to request that they ship you a hard copy, although I would not recommend this method for those that need it urgently as it can take up to three weeks to arrive, or even relay your whole credit report over the telephone. The latter method is not strictly free as we all know that long telephone calls cost money! It is also possible to obtain each of the three different credit reports at different stages of the 12 month period, which could assist you with monitoring changes in your credit performance over a period of time at no cost.

There is also another way that you can obtain a credit report for free, but this is a lot less simple and could end up costing you the earth. This way is to go directly to each of the three credit agencies and singing up for a free trial. Is this strictly free? for some yes, for others no, if you forget to cancel your free trial you will notice an unpleasant outgoing from your current account. Take Equifax as an example, they allow you to access your credit report for a period of 7 days at no cost, but for the many people that for one reason or another forget to cancel their trial there is a nasty suprise - $14.95 a month to be precise. Trans Union are not too much better, forgetting to cancel their free trial will set you back $11.95.

It is clear that the agencies make plenty of money from those that forget to cancel their free trials, so my personal recommendation would be to only use them if you absolutely have to, and always use your free legal entitlement before playing into the hand of the pricy agencies. If you have used your free credit reports and desperately need to access your latest information then by all means use the free trials, but please be sure to make a note of your subscription details and keep them somewhere prominant - I suggest attached to your computer monitor!

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