This totally made my day:

A Wisconsin college student filed a class-action complaint against Experian this week, claiming that the company's ubiquitous ads for FreeCreditReport.com led her to believe she could use the site to get a no-cost credit report.

Go figure! Someone believed that FreeCreditReport means you can get a free credit report? What are the odds!?

How this has gone on this long I'll never know. Even after 11,000 Better Business Bureau complaints the most that's been done to date was the very cool FTC spoof videos making fun of FreeCreditReport's TV ads where they did everything short of calling them crooks.

It's such an exquisite pleasure to watch this bogus company go down; let's hope this suit sticks.

Tags: Class Action, Credit Monitoring, Freecreditreport.com, FTC, Identity Theft, It's About Time

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer is my hero of the day.

"If these companies want to say — or sing for that matter — that they are giving people free credit reports, then they can't charge people $15 a month, simple as that," Schumer said. "For years, these companies have said with a smile that they will provide a free credit report — even though the government already requires a credit report be provided for free every year – and then suddenly, months later consumers get a bill in the mail for their credit monitoring services. My plan would finally bust up this scam and give consumers some honest choices."

Tags: Annualcreditreport.com, Charles Schumer, Credit Monitoring, Freecreditreport.com, Identity Theft, Senator

Rather than preventing the problem, many companies are satisfied (and make tons of profit) by inventing new services to attack the symptoms rather than the problem. Don't waste your time or money. Get a credit freeze and don't worry about all the snake oil. (H/T to The Consumerist for the link) Tags: Credit Freeze, Credit Monitoring, Identity Theft