Credit "Reporters" caught Spying-AGAIN!

That of course is not new, but I had a tiny little hissy fit yesterday when finding out a “Free Credit Report” company was spying on my credit report. And that surprised me? What turnip trunk did I fall off of? While deleting spam messages I saw an email with the subject, “Negative mark appeared on your credit report.” Furious, I logged onto their site (National Credit Reporting) and issued a complaint. STOP SPYING ON ME! Good Lord, creditors are worse than the Government’s Patriot Act. There is so much wrong with this, I just can’t imagine why more Americans are not mad as hell.

First let me state to you the obvious. Creditors and even Credit Marketers (I reiterate –MARKETERS) have the ability to peruse your credit report, while you (the owner of the credit score) can only look at once a year. So while you’re sitting around waiting until next year to get a free look at your credit score, anyone else can! AGAIN, while others can look at your report for free, YOU HAVE TO PAY! Does that sound like a fair deal?

While many Americans are struggling to pay their bills and many more are unemployed (myself included), it is grossly obscene for these credit score people poking around our finances looking for something to report. It is like journalists snooping through celebrity’s garbage to get a juicy scoop and it is like the obnoxious kid in school who would always tell the teacher, “Bob is misbehaving again!” If they really want to see who is misbehaving, check out all the CEO’s who are buying jets and throwing lavish parties on tax payer money. How are consumers to be responsible if our businesses are not?

Do not be naive. These “Free Credit Report” folks are not doing you any favors by monitoring your credit. It is a money making scheme at your expense – pure and simple. Their sale tactics are fear; fear someone is stealing your identity and fear someone has reported something negatively, or made a mistake. As FDR quoted, “You have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Don’t let fear be the reason you are spending your hard earned cash.

Do not be taken in by fear tactics to extort money from you. It is probably cheaper for you to monitor yourself and pay the fee to see your credit report on your own. If you are afraid of someone stealing your identity why would you hire a company and its employees to view your finances and where do you think a lot of credit fraud comes from-from inside these companies and their employees, not from your neighbor down the street. And secondly, if you are struggling to pay your bills why should you PAY more to have someone monitor your credit score? It makes absolutely no sense.

After my little tantrum subsided, I wrote a letter to two of my congressmen in Oregon. Here is what I asked/proposed.

1. Why can’t consumers have full time/free access to their credit scores?



2. How can creditors and worse credit marketers monitor our score to extort fear money from us?



3. How can consumers hide their credit score from unwanted solicitations and should we have the ability to give permission to those to access, say if we were buying a house, car or god forbid we need for a job.(Which is TOTAL BULLSHIT)

Consumers need protection and it is our job to tell our legislators we are tired of being taken for
granted. We are tired of being exploited due to fear. I hope this blog has incited some anger in hopes many will contact their state legislator to demand consumer production and free access to our credit scores. It is simply unfair we have to pay someone to monitor credit reports, which we do not have access to see.