Fix Your Credit The Right Way
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How do the companies advertising free credit reports make money?
Posted Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 17:48
What is their business model? They advertise a lot on the Internet and TV, they must be profitable. Triple Advantage is a service where they charge $10/month to your credit card… and in return, you get your report from the 3 bureaus each month. I’ll go out on a limb and assume there’s some ridiculous fee for cancelling the service. The only FREE site is AnnualCreditReport.com (or you can go to each bureau’s site individually). It’s run by one of the bureaus, and allows you to get your credit report from each of the bureaus absolutely free once per year (as mandated by the government). 
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When people check their credit report, it will advertise things after you get the report such as "improve your credit score here" or "protect your identity"…they charge to do these things and many people have said that these things they charge you for are useless and dont really improve or protect anything, just an organized racket. Some of the things they advertise may be affiliate companies, in which the free credit report company refers you to another company, and they get a commission for the referral. In other words, they spend money on advertising to get you to go to the site, they get way more visitors than they would if it wasnt advertised as free. So they use the "free" theme to get you there, where they can pitch other things to you which are not free.
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Ever notice the FreeCreditReport.com commercials always end with "offer applies with enrollment in Triple Advantage" ??
Triple Advantage is a service where they charge $10/month to your credit card… and in return, you get your report from the 3 bureaus each month. I’ll go out on a limb and assume there’s some ridiculous fee for cancelling the service.
The only FREE site is AnnualCreditReport.com (or you can go to each bureau’s site individually). It’s run by one of the bureaus, and allows you to get your credit report from each of the bureaus absolutely free once per year (as mandated by the government).
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Because they get people to go, thinking they will learn their credit score, but that is something different from the credit report. So then they see they have to pay for the credit score and some % must go ahead and do that, that makes it worthwhile.
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