Complaint Review: CIC Triple Advantage Www.freecreditreport.com - Orange California

FYI, for people who read my rebuttals and comments, I do not condone or defend illegal and unethical actions by companies reported on ROR. Many times, you must read the Terms and Conditions, i.e., the "fine print" of contracts otherwise you be caught in unwanted situations. I must admit that I have never read all 20+ pages of my mortgage agreeements and subsequent refinance paperwork and I doubt anyone including lawyers read every line of their mortgage or auto loan contrats. Bottom line: When signing up for any "free trial offers" or buying anything on the internet via a website, read the Terms and Conditions. You only have yourself to blame. I, myself, have signed up for website and get-rich-quick schemes, and I only have myself to blame. I am a grown adult. Bad customer service is something which is beyond a customer's control. You can request a supervisor if the rep will transfer you to a supervisor.

Many consumers of www.freecreditreport.com/CIC Triple Advantage ("FCR") sign up for the "free" credit report this site offers because reports they provide are from all three of the credit reporting agencies, which provide one yearly credit report for each consumer on whom they keep records for free. Many consumers find it easier to use one service rather than to go to each of the different agencies individually for their credit reports. FCR knows this and used this information as a marketing tactic at the time we signed up for the free credit reports they offered. As you can see, we were well aware that FCR offered an advantageous free service over the other free services available to us in that, while all were free, FCR's free service promised to deliver less hassle in acquiring all of our credit reports. If FCR did not intend to make free credit reports available to consumers without the consumers' purchase of FCR's more expensive premium services, I dare say many consumers -- yourself included, apparently -- would not use them since free credit reports are available to consumers through other means. You acknowledge this tacitly in your own rebuttal. The terms you cite for the service you bought with FCR were not the same terms under which we unknowingly bought their service. If you read the reports on this site, you will see that the terms change frequently -- as to both price and cancelation periods. Many state consumer laws dictate how long a cancelation period can be offered. Some states require businesses to make refunds for goods and services which do not fulfill the original contracts entered into by consumers and their vendors within specific periods, i.e., 30 days, 15 days, or 14 days. Some states do not. We had a 30-day cancellation period, but the point is moot as to how long it actually was, or should have been, since I immediately canceled it, just as you did. In fact, when we called 2/23/8 to cancel yet again, the phone rep. actually said to my husband, "OK, so we'll just upgrade you to (a premium service) then," after my husband asked him three times to just cancel the service. Three times. The rep. was talking so loudly and fast I could actually hear him from the other side of the room. It was all my husband could do to get his three requests to cancel the service into the conversation. That's harassment. That you had a pleasant experience with FCR, Wilson, is wonderful. That many, many others who used FCR's service exactly as you did -- indeed, exactly as we both did -- have not is not mitigated by your experience. There is a well-established pattern of bait-and-switch fraud here. The Better Business Bureau (www.labbb.org) has a couple thousand complaints (2,716) opened on them(http://www.labbb.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportPage_Expository.aspx?CompanyID=13062929), and as you can see by the number of complainants here, many are still coming forward despite years of class action suits against the company. We have read these complaints and have gotten some very good legal advice on how to make certain they do not, as many complainants here have attested they do, continue to take their fee from our account -- despite their indefensible argument that we agreed to be charged for a premium service by giving them our credit card in the first place; their own marketing materials demonstrate this information is extracted from consumers for the privilege of their free service. We may not be able to recover what has been taken from the account, but it was a lesson well-learned: we have canceled all automatic payments on our account (my husband actually thought he was paying for a gym membership he used sporadically because of the cryptic name that appeared on his statement instead of freecreditreport.com). We have also learned a lot about how to get our bank to work on our behalf in stopping these payments. Thanks, RipoffReport!

""Think about it, why would any company product or service company provide anything for free unless they are receiving something in return like advertising or new customers."" In the matter of a free credit report, the answer is because the Fair Credit Reporting Act mandates that every consumer may obtain one free credit report, from each of the 3 credit reporting agencies, annually. The free annual credit report is mandated by law. This website is a bit confusing to the uninitiated. There is a website that the 3 CRAs have set up to comply with the mandate of the FCRA and where consumers can request the free annual credit report without any "tricks" or trial period cancellations. The website is www.annualcreditreport.com

I do not work for FCR. I mention that only because many readers of ROR will assume that rebuttal authors work for the companies they are writing about whenever their opinions do not agree with the original poster. I would not say the people at freecreditreport.com (Experian) are theives because they post the terms and conditions on their website. Think about it, why would any company product or service company provide anything for free unless they are receiving something in return like advertising or new customers. Many of the complaints towards FCR stems from the fact that the people who sign up for the free trial period did not cancel within the 30-day period. I, myself, have used FCR and I have cancelled within the 30-day period with no problem. There is no false advertising. Freecreditreport.com (first page of website) IMPORTANT INFORMATION: When you order your free report here, you will begin your free trial membership in Triple AdvantageSM Credit Monitoring. If you don't cancel your membership within the 7-day trial period, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership.

If this charge has been coming out of his account for two years and he has not noticed it or done anything about it, you may want to be careful it combining finances. he doesn't seem to be very observant and this could cause problems for both of you once the finances are mixed.