Jenny and I have been retooling our budget and financial priorities lately to spend less and save/give more. In late January I decided to pull up our credit reports, since I’d heard we each get one for free each year. I went to www.freecreditreport.com thinking that was the site. I signed up, and they asked for a credit card. It turns out that the site is run by Experian, one of the credit reporting agencies, and you get your “free” report by signing up for a free trial of their $12.95/month credit monitoring service. It wasn’t completely clear to me when I signed up, but I had a vague notion that I should cancel within 30 days just in case I would get charged. I got the credit reports and filed them away. I also looked around on the website trying to figure out what I’d actually signed up for, but it still wasn’t clear.

A few days ago I saw two $12.95 charges from them on my credit card. The first option on their phone tree was to cancel your membership, which is a bad sign. I talked to a girl with an interesting accent and a definite script aimed at getting me to stay. After arguing with her a bit, I got her to cancel us. I wrote Experian an email about their bait-and-switch campaign and told them I planned to avoid Experian products from now on.

In case you’re curious (and I do recommend checking your credit report), the truly free credit report is at www.annualcreditreport.com. I haven’t tried it yet, and it doesn’t provide your actual credit score, but at least you’re not signing up for something without knowing it.