3 Free Credit Reports Each Week
Credit reports are an important record of credit activity and payment history for consumers. Lenders, creditors, service providers and other businesses use it to extend financial opportunities and other offers to people. With a good score you are not only more likely to get approved, but you will also get a better rate on loans. A good credit score can important even when you are looking for a job, or a new apartment to rent.
Some of the things that will help you have a high credit score are things like paying all your bill on time, keep balances low, do not close your oldest credit cards and more. But one of the easiest things to do is just checking your credit report regularly. This way you can easily see how recent financial events in your life impact your score, or catch negative remarks that should be in your credit report at all.
The most important credit scores are provided by the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Normally you get one free credit report from each bureau per year. But in a joint action, the three national credit reporting agencies have announced they are offering free weekly credit reports to all Americans for the next year to help them protect their financial health during the sudden and unprecedented hardship caused by COVID-19. The free reports will be available via AnnualCreditReport.com starting on April 20, 2020. So you can check your credit report as many as 156 times over the next 12 months.
The companies’ CEOs provided a joint statement on the decision to increase their offerings for the next year. “These are unprecedented times facing the world. People are feeling scared and uncertain about the future. To help play our part and reduce some of that anxiety, we are uniting as an industry to help people know the facts about their financial data. We are making credit reports more accessible more often so people can better manage their finances and take necessary steps to protect their credit standing,” said CEOs Mark W. Begor, CEO Equifax; Brian Cassin, CEO Experian; and Chris Cartwright, CEO TransUnion.
You should review your credit report frequently to understand the information that it contains. If you think you might not be able to pay a bill, talk with your lenders. Find out if they are offering any kind of assistance, before they report any missed payments to the credit bureaus.
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I see a potential problem with this offer, which seems great on first glance.
Consider if you check your credit report every week (or being lazy, every month) from now to April 2021, when the offer expires. Come May or June 2021 and you want to check one credit report. Will you find that there’s an error message stating “you are entitled to one free report every 12 months – your last free report was March 18, 2021 – you may receive a credit report upon payment of a fee”.
I wonder if there is language in the offer to prevent this. In other words, the yearly clock for a free report restarts April 2021.