Free Credit Reporting... Do You Have to Pay For Your Credit Report?

Credit reporting is important because it helps you monitor your credit report in order to ensure that that it is accurate and any disputes and errors are rectified and reflected on the report. Every action you take on your report either contributes positively or negatively to the credit score. If there are errors in a report, they need to be fixed very fast and waiting from the free credit report released yearly may not be advisable. Because of the increased need to monitor credit reports, there are reporting companies that have cropped up to offer these services.

There are only three major credit reporting agencies, which are legally authorized to provide one copy of free credit report per year. According to Fair Credit Reporting Act, every consumer can get a free copy of their credit report from the three major reporting agencies which are; Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

This means that you can get one copy of your credit report in every 12 months for free. However, if you want to monitor your report, you have to pay for the other copies. There are many credit reporting companies that are offering monitoring services for your credit history. These companies claim that they offer free credit reporting but in the real sense, you sign up for a trail period and then after that you are subjected to a paid service.

Consumers pay about $19 to $29 per month for credit reporting, a service that is provided for free. There is no need to pay for your credit reporting even if you want to monitor it. In fact, you can spread out your free credit history reporting from the three agencies and use them to monitor your credit history.

If you were to use the paid services, it means that you would pay at least $228 dollars in a year. This is a large amount you are paying for a service that is actually offered free. What you need to do is spread the three credit reports from the three major reporting companies. You can spread them in four-month intervals.

There are no restrictions as to when you can get your report from these companies. You can start with Equifax, and get your report on January. After four months i.e. the month of May, you can get your report from TransUnion, and after another four months, October, you can get the third report from Experian. This means that in one year, you have three reports.

You can use the reports to monitor the accuracy of the information. If there are errors, you are able to fix them in advance. This way, you save money and you do not have to pay for the free credit reporting services. One thing you need to know is that you cannot order your free reports from the three credit reporting agencies on their website.

These free reports are provided through annualcreditreport.com that has been provided the mandate to provide the free copies of the credit reports. However, if you want a paid credit report, you can order directly from these agencies. It is important that you watch out for websites that claims to be offering free credit reporting. You need to avoid them because they will eventually subject you to a paid service or even sell your personal information to marketing companies and spammers.