AnnualCreditReportReviews 41

I was a bit nervous from the last two reviews and hesitant in getting my credit reports. The overall experience was rather simple. I read carefully and understood and was able to save/print each report. When requesting your reports, Annualcreditreport.com opens an new link for each company, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax.

The only thing I could complain about that appears to have nothing to do with Annualcreditreport.com is finding the ability on each new hyperlink in printing the PDF version of the report. If you are computer savvy, then you can do a regular print command and then save it as a PDF or set you printer preference to pdf.

Total time spent getting reports was about 15-20 minutes.

As others have mentioned: make sure you have a copy saved before continuing onto the next report. You will not be able to return to it.

Good luck!

I wish I could give this site 0 stars. I agree with the reviewer who said that the credit reporting agencies have put in minimal (at best) effort with this "service", and only because the federal government has mandated it. I think that the federal government needs to head over and check it out, because the credit reporting agencies are absolutely NOT fulfilling their obligations to provide a free credit report to consumers once per year through this site. (Nevermind how hilariously ridiculous it is that we can only view our own personal information once a year without paying for it.) I have been told by two of three agencies that I must submit a request over the phone or through the mail because, for whatever arbitrary reason, they can't fulfil my request online. There is no live human to speak to on the phone, either. So when I don't receive my report as I am anticipating, I have exactly ZERO recourse. I am at their mercy and they are able to hold my personal information hostage, despite laws that were put in place to protect me (and you) from exactly this.

HORRIBLE experience.

First, this is a legit site. It (theoretically) allows you to get your credit report from all three credit report providers once a year, free of charge.

BUT they make it as incredibly painful for you as possible. I am an application developer, and their site fails just about every usability test I can imagine.

1) They use CAPTCHA-style human verification, but they use one with all capital letters. Typically, this type is case-insensitive, but is theirs? Of course not! Of course, they don't bother TELLING you that it's case insensitive, so you put in three bad codes and BOOM! They decide you've had enough fun, and make you start over from the BEGINNING. All the data you entered (the human verification is on the bottom) is wiped out.

2) The site is EXTREMELY counterintuitive, and the "security" questions they ask you are not good ones. If you, for example, pay more on a loan than is required, that might be a bad answer (or not? Who knows? They won't tell you.)

3) There is no opportunity to provide feedback for how badly they are screwing up. They have a "Contact Us" form, but even properly filled out, with all sorts of personal information, and another CAPTCHA trap, it won't accept your data... and after three times of verifying that all the fields they ask for are correct and properly filled in, and clicking submit, it blows away your feedback and makes you start over again, with absolutely no explanation.

Long story short, this is not a "service". This is something the federal government *required* the credit report providers to provide, and they put the absolute minimum effort into actually doing what they were required to do.

There is also no phone number, no email, no opportunity to contact a human to explain the multitudes of problems with this site. Good luck.

This site is supposed to be the real deal. I even accessed it through the FTC. However,. I am highly disappointed with the experience I had two days ago. I wanted to order all three reports so I went through the process and just as it went to the transunion page where I could view my transunion. I clicked the save as PDF button to save it. So I actually didn't see all of the report and never had an option to get access to my other reports. The site redirects me to a page with a message saying the page was temporarily unavailable and to check back later. Never could get my reports as I ordered! And to make it even worse I had trouble with their contact forms. Had to give it a few tries before it actually went through. Now I am without my reports and they haven't contacted me. I can't access their site either because the link shows a 404 page.

This is the main site if you want a free credit report from one of the major consumer credit reporting agencies. If one does not have the time or interest, due all three during a one site view. However, you can spread it out over a year, if you have the patience and forethought. Also, you can request it in print. Yes, they will attempt to upsell to other service. NOTE: there are other credit reporting agencies or various ilks. Wikipedia has an overview article on this matter. The site came as a result through a change in a federal law near ten years ago, with much consumer insistence

So I am very wary of entering my full birthday or social security anywhere online. So I was wondering if this site is legit, I guess it is, I had to confirm with this site and www.ftc.org - http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/freereports/index.shtml. Basically you fill out one form about your personal info and you get a credit report, not a credit score, free, from three different credit companies... Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. When you get the report make sure to save it or print immediately, once you navigate away you can't get it back from that credit company again.

This is the one! Each year you can get a free copy of your credit report. I love this site! It gives you access to all 3 credit reporting agencies. You can get all 3 reports at once or you can get a report every 4 months by just picking ONE credit reporting agency to print a report from each time.
You can sign up for a free account at the 3 credit reporting agencies and they will hold your report online for 30 days to view. They will try and upsell you to pay for your credit score or report monitoring. You probably don't need the score unless you're buying the Taj Mahal... HA! So go check your credit report now for free!

This site is pretty easy to use to see all three of your credit reports (although they will try to upsell you to see your credit score which you don't need to get there). This is the actual government mandated ftc site unlike all the other misleading ones which offer a free credit report with a trial signup with a credit monitoring service (which often are a pain in the butt to cancel once they start charging your credit card automatically).

This is the REAL website whereby you can access and print your credit report from all 3 credit reporting agencies once per year.

The site is easy to navigate, and only takes about 20-30 minutes to access ALL 3 of your reports and print them out. They also have useful information about disputes and other credit issues that you might need to know about. You can have a free report once per year. There are additional services available for a small charge to get your credit score or monitor your credit. All in all, a nice experience and very helpful!

Don't be scammed by the "freecreditreport.com" type sites. This is the ONLY ONE that is really free and supported by the credit bureaus themselves. All the rest of it out there is just a ploy to get you to buy their "credit monitoring" or protection services. Not really sure if those work or not. But if you want a service like that, it's available here from TrueCredit and it's terrific and a LOT LESS than you'll be hit for on many of the other sites.

I try to check my credit report every 6 months just to make sure no one has taken out any fake credit cards, etc. In the process of doing this, I've found many sites provide misleading information and try to trick consumers into paying for their own credit report (including mainstream banks and credit card companies).

However, we all have a right to see our credit report for free. Annualcreditreport.com will help you do it (they do it through Equifax, Experian, and TranUnion which are the three US credit reporting agencies) entirely online. It's pretty easy and only takes 10 minutes or so. Just be careful because the site will try to upsell you on paying for your credit score (which is different from your credit report) and other services you probably don't need.

The FTC also has written about this http://www.ftc.gov/freereports