Is a Free Instant Credit Report Available?

A credit report is normally purchased and can oftentimes cost as much as $15.00 a month. This can be seen as an expensive and an unnecessary expense by many people. Thankfully, there are still ways to obtain a credit report without have to pay anything at all.

How to Obtain a Free Credit Report

There are two ways to get your credit report without having to shelf out your hard earned money to purchase it.

• Obtain your free credit report from the government-mandated service operated by the three credit bureaus.
• Sign up for third party services that offer free credit reports but cancel your subscription after obtaining your report.

As such, there are always advantages and disadvantages to each of these two methods. This is why it is important to know how to go about with each method and the pros and cons behind each.

Official Free Credit Report Service

The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires the three major credit bureaus to issue a free credit report for any individual in a 12-month period. However, this does not mean that anyone can instantly demand for their free credit report from any of these three companies. The Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act have stipulated a few rules on how you can obtain your free credit report using this service.

The three major credit bureaus - TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax; maintain a service (www.AnnualCreditReport.com) that allows anyone to request for their free credit report every year.

However, this does not mean that you can only make only one request from this service each year. You are entitled to one request from each bureau each year so that means you can either obtain all three credit reports at once or have them obtained at different times.

The credit report can be requested by mail, phone, or through the website itself and the credit report is usually sent by mail in 15 days.

Third Party Credit Report Services

These services are all over the internet nowadays. They usually entice visitors of their websites to try out their service for free. These services can indeed give you a free credit report, but all subsequent reports will come with a fee.

These services are perfect for you if you have already requested for all three free credit reports from www.annualcreditreport.com in less than a year.

However, it is best to be cautious when trying out these services.

Make sure that before you sign up for a free credit report from them, you are sure that you are free to unsubscribe from their service at anytime to protect you from getting credit card deductions. Luckily, there are also legitimate free credit report offers in the internet that do not trick customers into signing up and end up unfairly getting funds from their credit cards. One such legitimate and trusted company is https://www.credit.com/ufg/default/id_guard_extra_caution.