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Getting a free credit report has not always been easy, and has previously relied on signing up for free trials with one of the three credit bureaus; these three credit bureaus are Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. The good news is that it is easy now, following the passing of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act of 2003. Federal Law now states that every American citizen is entitled to receive a free copy of each of the three recognisable credit reports every 12 months.

In order to receive your free credit reports just visit www.annualcreditreport.com, where you will be able receive your reports either instantly online, through the mail, or relayed to you over the telephone. It should be noted that it is not obligatory to receive all three credit reports at the same time, in fact you can choose to view each credit report at a different time throughout the 12 month period. Users should be aware that opting to receive your credit report by mail can take up to three weeks, so if you are in urgent need of viewing your report you should opt for one of the two alternative methods.

As mentioned earlier, there are other ways to receive a copy of your credit report, this would involve signing up for a trial directly with one of three credit agencies via their websites. Each website will only show you their version of the credit report, so if you need all three you will need to sign up for three separate trials. In addition their are more expensive sites that allow an initial trial to view all three reports, these include www.creditchecktotal.com who give you a 7 day trial, but will charge you an astonishing $29.95 for each month that you forget to cancel.

Beware, if you forget to cancel your trial before the end of the period you will get a nasty account debit - and they are not cheap! For example, Equifax allow you to access your credit report for a period of 7 days at no cost via the website www.freecreditreport.com , but for the many people that forget to cancel their will be a hefty $14.95 leaving their bank account after this 7 days and for each month that follows. It is clear that the agencies make a tidy sum from those forgetting to cancel free trials, so I would recommend that you stick with using the only guaranteed no fee method, resorting to direct dealings with the agencies only if you need to review your reports for a second time in a year.

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