I’ve been considering signing up for one for some time now, and even though most will give me a free, or at least cheap, trial, I’d rather not have to waste my time calling and canceling most of them if someone out there has a little personal experience they’d care to share.
Right now, I’m leaning towards one of the following three:
I’m liking IdentityGuard’s CreditProtectX3 program, for the simple fact that it monitors all 3 credit bureaus instead of just one, but then, it’s also up there in price at $12.99 a month, with no free trial (though a ‘first three months for the price of two’ offer).
Privacy Guard looks pretty similar, but their wording in their billing makes me uncomfortable: “Unless you call to cancel during your 2-month trial, we’ll automatically extend your privileges for a full year at the low $12.99 Monthly membership fee…” Which to me could read “We’re going to charge you $155.88 at the end of your trial period, which technically is $12.99 monthly…”, though I’m not sure that’s what they actually mean. I could drop them an email to find out for sure, but hell, if they can’t even take the time to make their billing clear (or if they’re intentionally obfuscating it in order to get a bigger order), I’m not so sure I should trust them to make my credit reports any clearer.
And then there’s FreeCreditProfile, a slick looking little site, but it appears they use information from just one credit bureau (TransUnion) for their reports. Substantially cheaper than the other two – about half price at $79.95 a year, or about $6.66 a month. But then, if it’s providing just a third of the potential info, it’s not all that great a deal, is it.
Choices, choices…
