You’ve seen the commercial by now. The guy in the silly pirate outfit singing about how his identity was stolen, and that unfortunate circumstance could have been avoided if he had only gone to freecreditreport.com to monitor his credit report. If you haven’t seen the commercial by now, you can view it here.
While I think the guy in the pirate suit is funny, and my husband will attest that the tune is catchy (I sing it all the time), this commercial really bugs me. Why? Because he’s singing about a free credit report that isn’t really free. At the very end of the commercial a voice says “Offer applies with enrollment in Triple Advantage.”
I went to the freecreditreport.com website to see what Triple Advantage was, and whether it was free. There is a 30 day trial period that is free, but you have to remember to cancel in the 30 day period, or you will be billed $14.95 a month. The company knows that most people will forget to cancel their memberships, so they are almost certain to make money on this deal.
Freecreditreport.com isn’t the only site to use this tactic. It’s everywhere. Recently I needed a copy of WinZip. Instead of paying full price, I decided to sign up for the free version. Unfortunately I also needed to sign up for a 30 day free trial to Stamps.com to take advantage of the offer.
Obviously, since I signed up for the free trial to get the free software, I’m not advocating that you skip all free trials. I take advantage of them frequently. I use Google Calendar to send me reminders well before the date I need to cancel the service. And then I cancel the service that day. I never wait until the last minute, because you never know when you’ll get busy and forget to make the call.
Before I ever take advantage of a free offer, I research to see if there’s a better option. In the case of the free credit report, you can get a truly free copy at annualcreditreport.com. No trials. No catches. You can get a copy of your credit reports from each of the three reporting agencies once a year.
If I can’t find a truly free option, I look into the free subscription offers. I make a note of when I need to cancel and set my calendar to remind me at least one week before that date. I also find out exactly what I need to do to cancel. I find the phone number, the email address, whatever information I need. If I can’t find it before I sign up, I don’t sign up. I’ve heard horror stories of people who have signed up for free offers and then haven’t been able to figure out how to cancel. If I can’t figure out how to cancel before I sign up, it’s not worth the risk.
Free offers can be worth it if you take the necessary precautions to make sure the offer is really free. But if you aren’t organized enough to make sure you follow through on canceling the trial, don’t sign up. The paid services are rarely worth the money.
Do you sign up for “free with a 30 day trial offers”? If you do, what steps do you take to ensure you won’t get charged? If you don’t, why not? Have you ever been burned by such an offer? Share your story in the comments!
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January 9th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Great post Lynnae. I’ve stopped signing up for things that offer a free trial. It is such a hassle to cancel most of the time because they usually don’t make it easy to cancel. I am more likely to do a free trial if I can cancel online. I hate calling!!
January 9th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Yeah, I got suckered into the “freecreditreport.com” mess. I was paying $13.00 a month for the longest time because I couldn’t REMEMBER to call and cancel, and when I finally did, I couldn’t figure out HOW to cancel the darn thing. Finally, I had to call (couldn’t email or do it online) while I was at work because their hours were only from 8am to 3pm Eastern (or something crazy like that), and then they tried to get me to keep paying! I am NEVER doing anything like that ever again!!!!
Great post! Thanks for all the info! I love reading you.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:41 am
I have gotten bitten several times in this way. I quit trying, especially after the last fiasco when I tried to cancel Stamps.com but couldn’t because you have to call them to cancel and no one ever answered the phone–it took me a whole month to cancel and they wouldn’t refund my money even though the reason I couldn’t cancel is that they were not available. I DO NOT recommend Stamps.com. Hopefully they have changed there ways in the two years since that happened and I would love to try them again but was so angry at the false advertising (what they said you got wasn’t what you actually got at the time) as well as the inability to cancel that I have never been willing to try them again.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:47 am
@SGM - I definitely prefer to cancel online, too. I have phone phobia.
@Haeli - I’m sorry you got bit by freecreditreport.com! I hate that time difference things, too. I don’t know where you are, but it makes it really hard for people here on the West Coast.
@heather - Wow, I’m really fortunate then! I didn’t have any problems canceling. Perhaps I’ll have to rethink whether these free trials are worth it at all. As it is, I’m pretty selective about what I’ll try, but maybe selective isn’t good enough.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:30 am
No I don’t sign up for the free trials. I’ve been leery of how hard it might be to cancel. I did get the truly free credit report at annualcreditfreport.com. It was helpful but I’d like to know what my FICA (?) score is. Anyone know how you can get the actual number for free?
Thanks!
January 9th, 2008 at 8:33 am
I signed up with freecreditreport before I knew about annualcreditreport. It didn’t even work right…but on the plus side I remembered to cancel it so everything ended up fine.
(There’s another commercial for one that supposedly lets you see your credit scores, again if you sign up for X program.)
January 9th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I have had the same problem with Stamps.com, and I never even used the service! My husband signed up for a free trial of hydraderm from MyPoints for a whole bunch of extra points, and I deligently called to cancel a few days before the 30 day free trial period ended, only to find out that the 30 days started the day that he signed up; the actual trial period was only about 10 days after the shipment finally arrived! I’m with you-I only sign up for freebies when I have a clear exit strategy now! BTW, how does one get rid of Stamps.com????
January 9th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Lynnae,
CoffeeCup [http://www.coffeecup.com] offers a truly free Zip program. I’ve been using it (and other CoffeeCup software) for almost 10 years.
I, too, stay away from Trial Offers. I’ve never had an exceptional memory but since suffering a series of TIAs, sometimes I’m lucky to remember to brush my teeth.
Really, the stress that memory issues creates in my daily life is pretty high — the last thing I need to add more stress by playing the Free Trial arbitrage game. Kudos to those of you who successfully beat these guys at their own game but it’s not for everyone.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Every time I open Winzip there is a big message Your Evaluation Period has expired! WinZip is not Free. I’ve been running the evaluation version for 636 (606 days beyond the free period) without a problem.
We got caught on the automatic renewal with Rosetta Stone, you can know order it online (program is damm expensive to buy) and we forgot to cancel the automatic renewal, cost us another 100 euros, I know have a reminder set on my mail program.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
You don’t really need WinZip. Everything can be done with 7zip here: http://www.7-zip.org/
It’s free, open-source- and can open Winzip files just the same.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Even my children caught the “offer applies with enrollment in Triple Advantage.” I was proud they caught it but it still demonstrates that very few things in life are truly free.
My big problem is that it seems like everything is set up these days to be a monthly fee, and it never ends. In finance it’s called a perpetuity. I need a few more of those myself!
January 9th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
That FreeCreditReport is very misleading. I’m sure countless number of people have fallen for their free pitch!
-Raymond
January 9th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Thank you for using this blog to bring up the farce that I believe Free Credit Report dot com is! Those commercials annoy me to no end!
Great advice!!
January 10th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Nothing worth while in life is free. The credit report at the government site does no good without the credit score.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:14 am
@Jeremy - I guess it depends on what your purpose in getting the report is. I mainly use my credit report to make sure nobody is using my identity. I don’t worry too much about my score these days.
January 12th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Thanks for the Google calendar tip. I never thought of using it this way, but it’s a great idea!
January 13th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
This is a great post. I am always angry when I see commercials and online offers for things that are free and actually cost money. I’ve been angry about that sort of stuff since I saw the first thing like this online when I was, like, 10. However, if you make the time for it, it can be a good way to get things you need for free.
I went to freecreditreport.com for mine and I just KNEW before going there that it would just be a free trial sort of thing that I would have to sign up for with a credit card anyway. I did it nonetheless, and canceled after I had printed the report (SAME HOUR). The lady on the phone was baffled that I had signed up only about 15 minutes before and wanted to cancel ;), but I was insistent and she canceled it all the same and gave me my cancellation confirmation number, which I wrote on the bottom on my credit reports (printed) for my files
(holy run-on sentence!)
All in all, I think this sort of stuff is a horrible con to play on anyone’s weakness to get things done in time and ultimately make money off of them. I wanted to use Dave Ramsey’s TMMO online thing, but it has the same deal… if you don’t cancel within the allotted 15 days (or whatever it is), they will automatically charge you $xx.xx monthly from there on in. I opted not to try the free demo in the first place. I am constantly irked by this and other offers that Dave endorses, but there’s that and I can’t do anything about it. I have decided, personally, not to bother with most of the “free” offers except those which I plan to cancel immediately (literally) after I have gotten what I wanted.
January 15th, 2008 at 7:36 am
For a truly free copy of your credit report from each of the 3 agencies, go to http://www.annualcreditreport.com. You are allowed by law to request a free copy of your credit report every 12 months. This report will not give you your FICO score, just your credit report.
January 16th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Lynnae:
Great post!
One of the reasons we started Search Free Apps (www.SearchFreeApps.com), which you recommended right after our launch was to save people the time of figuring out whether free was really free.
We assumed that people likes free trials, but are tired of forgetting to cancel. So, we only include free trials where no credit card is required. Of course, we also include services that are 100% free.
I thought your readers might be interested to know that we now have over 970 distinct free services.
Bruce Judson
Founder, Search Free Apps
http://www.SearchFreeApps.com
January 18th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Here is where having a credit card really came in handy. Anything that I think I might have problems cancelling (like AOL) put on a credit card. I accidentally signed up for a CD club when I only wanted to purchase one CD (on relaxation-ha,ha). The number you were supposed to call was always going to a full mailbox! I finally emailed them, then I called my credit card company and put a 4 month freeze on the card. I never recieved anymore unwanted CDs and I am not supposed to use the card anyway.
April 29th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
The annual credit report site is great to get your credit report once per year. But as mentioned above, they don’t give you your score and you can only get one free report per year from each agency. It’s also good to keep track of your FICO score as well, and that is never free no matter where you go. MyFico.com has a service called Score Watch that is great for tracking your credit score.