Free Credit Report Canada

Due to the recent credit crisis and housing collapse leading rules have changed dramatically. Despite historically low mortgage rates, most people cannot qualify for them without a really good credit score. This is why it is very important to get your free credit scores and know where you stand and know where you have to improve to get the lowest mortgage rate.

So where can you get free credit scores?

Several sites now offer free “credit scores” which are based off of scoring formulas similar to the national credit bureau formulas at TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. The accuracy of these scores is debatable. Comments on a recent Wall Street Journal article stated these scores are not reliable when it comes to mortgages and refinancing.

These sites are credit.com, creditkarma.com and quizzle.com. They can provide you with an estimated score range instead of an exact score and you can expect loads of advertisements all over the site with many offers you are encouraged to sign up for.

Why doesn’t the government provide free credit scores in addition to free credit reports?

The easy answer is they were not part of the arrangements with the credit reporting agencies who are now required by law to provide them for free. They are only required to provide your free credit reports and that’s just what they do. They can still make money selling you the credit scores and that’s just what they do.

You can expect to pay around $8-$10 for each credit score so that’s around $24-$30 each time you want to check your scores. And then the experts tell you to check them every few months so you can easily spend over hundred dollars over the course of a year.

So where does that leave you?

You can go to sites that you see advertised on TV and sign up to get your free credit reports and scores from all three credit reporting agencies.

Doing this will allow you to monitor your credit score on an ongoing basis so you can check your credit worthiness in less than a minute instead of having to sift through 20 to 30 pages of your credit reports trying to decode all the abbreviations.

Getting your free credit scores this way does not lower your score because it is a soft inquiry instead of a hard inquiry which can lower your score. And you will be able to keep track of any suspicious activity in your credit report that could affect your score or result in identity theft.

Every consumer in America has the right to a free credit report once every year by law as of September 2005. But since that law has passed there has been nothing but confusion.

The web sites that say they are offering this so called free credit report, are asking us to give them our credit card information. Does that sound like a free credit report to you?

You may have even given your credit card number to these companies to sign up for a thirty day trial for a credit service that has almost nothing to do with getting your free credit report.

In all fairness, you can cancel this service after thirty days. But how many people do you think forget and end up with monthly or even annual credit card charges?

In fact, these companies are counting on you forgetting about the thirty day trial and charging that fee on your credit card. But if the law says you get a free report, what’s the deal?

A lot of people are confused about these free credit reports because of how some companies are marketing the free credit report. Hopefully, this information will clear a few things up for you.

For people who just want the bottom line, a free credit report is available at Free Credit Report and this is the only official site that helps consumers to obtain their annual free credit report.

This site’s security protocols are excellent with physical and technological security and encryption. That’s important for identity theft purposes because the information on your credit report should be seen by your eyes only.

So if this site is readily available and anyone can get a free credit report once a year, what’s the catch? Here is the catch: the credit report you get from Free Credit Report does not have any credit scores.

Now you may be asking, “Then what good is getting this free credit report without a credit score?” There are a few good reasons why you may want to look at your credit report even without a credit score.

Did you know that more than forty percent of all credit reports have errors? If you spot these errors, you can get them cleared up before it affects your credit score. If you contact a credit bureau about an error, they have to clear it up or remove it after thirty days by law.

If you monitor and review your credit report, you can check to be sure that you are not a victim of identity theft. If someone takes over your accounts and charges up thousands of dollars in debt, they can destroy your credit score in a matter of hours.

These are just a couple of good reasons why you want to get your free credit report once a year and inspect it just to be sure everything looks like it should. You can get your free credit report online at Free Credit Report or by phone or through the mail.

So where do you get your credit score from? This is where the confusion comes in and here is the answer. The law Congress passed did not say anything about a credit score just one free credit report a year per consumer.

You have to pay a service to get your credit score and some companies are confusing people with the way they are marketing this. They offer you a free credit report and score and many consumers believe it’s their annual free credit report.

But if you have to sign up for a credit service they offer for a 30 day trial period, does that sound free? What these companies are counting on is you forgetting about the 30 day trial and charging a fee on your credit card once that trial period is over.

It’s in the fine print, but how many people actually read that. So here is a good common sense rule of thumb. Any time you have to give your credit card information, ask yourself, “is this really free?”

Many of you probably know this is happening because you have been trapped with this kind of marketing tactic. But for those of you that just want your annual free credit report, you can at least be aware as to what is really going on and have a no nonsense way to get it.