Credit report Milwaukee

There she purchased her TransRisk credit score, TransUnion's assessment of her credit worthiness. Temple thought her score 608 was just high enough for her to qualify to buy a $207,000 home in a gated community in Holiday, Fla.

WATCH OUT: Typos can lead you to imposter credit sites "I credit report Milwaukee was so excited," says Temple, who signed a purchase agreement with her fianc. The mortgage company, it turned out, judged Temple, 33, differently. It looked at her FICO score, the assessment widely used by lenders, based on a formula supplied by Fair Isaac. Temple's FICO score was nearly 100 points lower than her TransRisk score. "Needless to say, we had to back out of our contract," she says.

Temple didn't know that TransUnion and the other bureaus are trying to wrest control of the credit-scoring market from Fair Isaac. She had no way of knowing the competing scores differed. Confusion awaits any consumer who dares tread online in search credit report Milwaukee of a credit score, personal finance experts say. "It's one of the biggest rip-offs you can find," says credit consultant John Ulzheimer, author of You're Nothing But A Number: Why credit report Milwaukee Achieving Great Credit Scores Should Be On Your List of Wealth Building Strategies. Consumers are also getting tricked into paying for basic credit reports before obtaining credit report Milwaukee the ones they can get free, as credit report Milwaukee mandated by the federal government in 2003. business credit report The only place those free reports are available is at AnnualCreditReport.com, run jointly by the Big Three (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax (EFX)). Yet, dozens of websites affiliated with the bureaus falsely credit report Milwaukee imply that they can also distribute the government-mandated free reports. At FreeCreditReport.com, credit report Milwaukee ConsumerInfo.com, PrivacyMatters.com, Free3BureauCreditReport.com and other similarly named websites, free trial offers and package deals abound. The most ubiquitous: pitches for free credit reports and free credit scores if you credit report Milwaukee subscribe to a "credit monitoring" service that credit report Milwaukee alerts you each time a lender checks credit report Milwaukee your credit history, says Robert Mayer, a University of Utah professor who has analyzed two dozen such sites for Consumer Reports WebWatch. "The word 'free' is used so freely that it really has no meaning in the context of these types of sites," Mayer says. where to get your free credit report The profusion of websites hawking credit reports, credit scores and credit monitoring to consumers have one thing in common: They all sell data supplied by the Big Three. The bureaus are the drivers behind a blizzard of consumer promotions for credit reports (a record of how you pay your bills); credit scores (a calculation of your creditworthiness, based on your credit report); and credit monitoring (credit report Milwaukee a monthly subscription service, which credit experts credit report Milwaukee say is of marginal value). Thanks credit report Milwaukee to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, each bureau must supply every consumer with one free credit report a year.

But while meeting the minimum requirements of this federal mandate, the Big Three have been energetically tapping online shoppers for hundreds of millions of dollars of fresh revenue and profit. By selling credit data via websites that use "free credit report" and "free credit score" as inducements to sign credit report Milwaukee up for credit monitoring, which has become credit report Milwaukee a cash cow. No surprise that credit report Milwaukee the vast matrix of websites pitching credit credit report Milwaukee data to consumers engenders befuddlement. Even industry insiders say it's all too easy for consumers to get flummoxed. "There should be more education about what you receive and how to navigate credit report Milwaukee the various sources of information," says Mark Catone, senior vice president of First American Credco, which processes credit reports. history credit report Experian, credit report Milwaukee for instance, sells to consumers at Experian.com and at six other sites. Experian spokesman Don Girard says that credit report Milwaukee selling to consumers at websites using different names "is just creative marketing." TransUnion, credit report Milwaukee privately owned by the billionaire Pritzker family of Chicago, operates TrueCredit.com, the site where Wendy Temple bought her TransRisk credit score, as a wholly owned subsidiary.