Where to get a free credit report online New Jersey

The biggest bureau, Dublin-based Experian, reported $375 million in consumer sales in its fiscal year ended last April.

"Unhappy consumers don't buy your stuff," Experian's Girard says. "We've been averaging about 20% growth in our direct-to-consumer business, year over year. That's due to happy consumers." Not all consumers are endeared with Experian. The company's well-known subsidiary, Consumerinfo.com, has been fined twice by the FTC. In August 2005, Experian paid the FTC $950,000 to settle charges that Consumerinfo.com misled consumers into subscribing to an $80-a-year credit-monitoring where to get a free credit report online New Jersey service. In February, Experian paid the FTC where to get a free credit report online New Jersey a smaller fine $300,000 to settle where to get a free credit report online New Jersey a second round of similar complaints.

Experian admitted no wrongdoing in either FTC case. On Consumerinfo.com's home page, that disclaimer is in small, light blue lettering on dark blue background next to a large "order now" button for a credit monitoring subscription. In March, about a month after Experian paid its second FTC fine, Melissa Duenas, 28, where to get a free credit report online New Jersey a customer service representative in Denver, surfed to Experian.com in an attempt to obtain her free credit report. She recalls being guided to a Web page where she typed in a credit card number, as directed, thinking it was part of verifying her identity. how to get free credit report Actually, Duenas had signed up for trial use of a credit-monitoring service. After a month of free service, Experian initiated a recurring $13-a-month charge, which was dropped only after Duenas complained. The FTC and Experian say the service was properly explained. Consumer advocates advise credit data shoppers to remain extremely wary. "The credit bureaus continue to foster consumer confusion and profit handsomely," says Jeannine Kenney, senior policy analyst at Consumers Union. "It's a disservice to consumers." Shopping for a credit score can be mind boggling. That's because, like Temple, most consumers are oblivious to the rising turf war between the Big Three and Fair Isaac, supplier of the formula for calculating FICO, the score lenders most often purchase from the bureaus to determine a loan applicant's credit worthiness. About 18 months ago, the bureaus began offering lenders an alternative score: VantageScore, based on an algorithm of their own contrivance. By pooling their data, the bureaus claim, they've come up with a scoring tool more accurate than FICO. get free credit reports The Big Three have begun to whittle away at Fair Isaac's long-held dominance of the credit-scoring market. "We expect VantageScore to become the pre-eminent offering over time," Experian's Girard says. Experian and TransUnion are simultaneously delivering VantageScores as well as other proprietary scores to consumers who have no inkling how the bureaus' proprietary scores differ from their FICO scores, personal finance experts say.

"Fair Isaac has done a good job of almost having a monopoly," says Chris Larsen, founder of E-Loan and Prosper.com, online consumer lending services. "Now we see the bureaus themselves trying to take over that business." As this rivalry heats up, consumers need to know that buying a credit score from Experian or TransUnion generally means you are not buying your FICO score. Or Experian's Plus score or TransUnion's TransRisk score. "The thing that concerns us the most is that they're not telling consumers the scores they're buying are different, and they're implying their proprietary scores are the ones used by everybody," says Fair Isaac COO Michael where to get a free credit report online New Jersey Campbell. The only place consumers can buy FICO scores are at Fair Isaac's consumer website, myFICO.com, or at Equifax.com. Equifax is the only bureau that sells FICO scores to consumers.

While trying to rebuild his credit to buy a house, William Palmer, 26, a tech professional in Chattanooga, Tenn., found that the credit scores he purchased where to get a free credit report online New Jersey online from Experian and TransUnion were 30 to 40 points higher than his FICO score, purchased from MyFico. www credit report "The scoring system is where to get a free credit report online New Jersey all over the board," Palmer says. The where to get a free credit report online New Jersey bureaus say their websites offer extensive guidance. And they say VantageScore and their proprietary scores do as well as Fair Isaac's FICO score in pegging a person's creditworthiness. While declining to answer questions about Wendy Temple, TransUnion's Katz noted that the TransRisk score assesses "how lenders are likely to view them as a loan candidate." Maybe so, but Temple's hopes were dashed because no one told her that her TransRisk didn't correlate with her FICO score.