Wachovia Sends Out Its Own "Free Credit Report!" Offer To Customers
Tom just received a great offer from his bank. He can receive a free credit report just by peeling off this sticker and affixing it to another part of the same page. That's right, a free motherloving credit report! Who doesn't want one of those? Free, you say? Sign me up!
Oh, it also comes with an enrollment in some sort of identity theft protection program for $13 a month.
Looks like Wachovia (a Wells Fargo Company) is now taking its lead from a singing pirate. Just in time for your post yesterday on the CARD Act and its impact on "free" credit reports, I recieved the attached letter from my bank, asking me to simply attach a sticker and return the mailing in the enclosed prepaid, already-addressed envelope to get a Free Credit Report! What could be easier!
Naturally, upon reading the fine print, one finds this little doozy: "Unless I call to cancel during my thirty-day trial, my protection will be automatically continued at the $12.99 monthly credit monitoring fee, or then current monthly fee, debited from my primary Wachovia checking account each month, without my having to do anything further."
Granted, it's all laid out for you relatively clearly in the small print, but how is this any different than what FreeCreditReport.com is doing? And why is my bank selling my personal information to a third party for the sole purpose of shadily trying to get me to sign up for a "credit monitoring service" of dubious value? This stinks. The only reason I've stayed with super-inconvenient Wachovia while living in New York City is out of loyalty - I used to work for them - but if this is the way they're doing business now, screw 'em.
We know why they're doing it—because there's still a lot of confused or ignorant consumers out there who either don't know about annualcreditreport.com (the only real source of free credit reports), or who see the phrase "free credit report" and stop looking for alternatives. The sticker gimmick seems particularly silly, and aimed at customers who have an "I just won a contest!" mentality when it comes to offers in the mail.
We don't know if offers like this one will be covered under the CARD Act, because Wachovia does make it quite clear that there's going to be an ongoing fee after the first 30 days. It's nowhere near as misleading as the FreeCreditReport.com commercials, in other words.
That doesn't change the fact that if you really want to pull your credit reports for free, annualcreditreport.com is the only place where you can do it.
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My bank is Wells Fargo, so now owning Wachovia it doesn't surprise me that they are now sending these out to Wachovia customers. I've gotten these little 'gems' before. Always rip 'em up and toss them.
annualcreditreport.com is a scam. Yes, I say that about a lot of these companies.
Sure, it's a "free credit report" but have any of you tried to obtain your credit report? Each of the three reporting bureaus makes it INCREDIBLY difficult to navigate their websites, TWO don't even offer an online version, instead you have to call some number.
While you are navigating the site that does offer it online or even the other two that don't, you're constantly inundated with "click this button for a free credit score as well." Um, it's not free, like the Wachovia scam, they want you to sign up for credit monitoring service which can ONLY be canceled by calling up and canceling within 30 days. Oh, and if you DO decide to cancel within the first 30 days, you're put on this interminable hold until you give up. So, unless you've got the patience of a stone, you're going to get hit with a credit monitoring service charge until you get yourself on the phone, deal with the Filipino call center workers who take classes in being completely incomprehensible, and after performing the necessary rituals and ablutions at midnight on the shores of lake Gichigumi, do you get to cancel the service you never wanted in the first place and instead believed the clearinghouse the government set up to get your free credit report was really in your best interest.
@sanjsrik:
What in god's name are you talking about? I have been obtaining 3 free credit reports a year like clockwork through annualcreditreport.com for the past 4 years or so. For the last couple of years (following advice on consumerist) I have even staggered them so I get one in Jan, one in May and one in Sep.
You have to just watch out for 'hooks' dangled by the credit agencies. That's all.
Glad this was posted. Was thinking about opening an account at Wachovia. Now no way.
I just got one of these last week, right into the shredder it went. Along with the life insurance offers and crap like that I've been getting every month or so from Wachovia for years.
I could pretty well just automatically shred every piece of mail I get from Wachovia since all my banking is online, even my statement. So the only mail I've gotten from Wachovia in a couple of years has pretty well just been junk mail.
@sanjsrik: Not sure what you're talking about. Been using annualcreditreport.com for my credit scores for a couple of years, now, and haven't had any trouble...It's freecreditreport.com which is the scam..
@sanjsrik: Your rant is strange. I just got a credit report today using transunion. It was very easy, as I have gotten one every year. (You should stagger your reports so you can check it every 4 months). I was already registered, and it took less then 5 minutes. I think there were three screens that I had to click no thanks before actually getting the report. And they were opt in type of buttons, not opt out, which is good. They boxes WERE NOT automatically checked.
Got mine yesterday and knew just what to look for: "enroll in $" wamp waaaamp. Trash.
@sanjsrik: Joining the "no clue what you're talking about" crowd here. Yes, you do need to do a login/fill out a form for each agency, which is a bit annoying, but the ACR central page smooths that out as much as possible, exporting a lot of your personal data so you don't have to enter it three times. Certainly all three have online access. And, yes, each bureau offers extra services (I think all 3 offered an actual credit score for around $8), but that was (a) easily refused, and (b) an explicit-fee transaction, not some sort of scammy "free with enrollment" thing.
So, er, dunno what your point is, because annualcreditreport.com is just about the best interface I can think of for acquiring free data from 3 different businesses with different identity-verification procedures. One can reasonably expect a certain amount of redundancy and a few additional-service offers with that, but they're reasonably acceptable aspects of the transaction, in my experience.
@sanjsrik: Are you out of your everloving skull? Annualcreditreport.com is the last site you want to be flaming right about now.
Cuz you just got cooked for it.
BestBank is doing this as well.
I just remembered. In those "FreeCreditReport.com" commercials, at the end it says, "Offer applies with enrollment in triple advantage."
So I don't think this will be the end of those catchy commercials.
Bank of America has done this a few times with me. I enrolled and then cancelled before the month was up. Other than having to turn down their sales pitch it was pretty simple.
@Josh_G: I too bank with Wachovia and prefer to do all my transactions online. However, you can have yourself removed from all solicitations by giving them a quick phone call to 1-800-Wachovia. Very painless... only took about 1-minute.
@diesel54: Yes, I received a phone call from a third-party contractor to BofA last week attempting to sell a similar product with recurring monthly charges. He wouldn't take no for an answer, and went on and on about identity theft, etc. I made him repeat back to me that I had declined the service then promptly called my banker to lodge a complaint against the bank using this shady practice.
I can't believe this old trick still works.
Strange, I got a call from my mom saying I got a letter at her address (I lived there like 4 years ago) from Wachovia. I told her to forward it to me, but I'm not nor have ever been a Wachovia customer, nor Wells Fargo. At one point I may have applied to something through Wachovia or Wells Fargo, it's possible but I don't know. I have a feeling it's probably this.
Citibank offers the same thing. I don't get paper statments but they advertise it to me online and over the phone when I call in. Same thing, free month and then $1x/mo there after.
US Bank sends me these things every few months.
@craptastico: There was a period of time when I made a nice bit of money on those things -- probably $50 or so. I think I only slipped up once, but managed to get the subscription canceled and the charge refunded when I caught it. It got annoying when they started decreasing the amount of the checks, though -- first $25, then then $10, then $5, and eventually they just stopped coming.
It's a nice, fairly hassle-free source of income if you're the type who can stay on top of things and enjoys gaming the system.
@undefined: YOu guys haven't realized he meant "freecreditreport.com" did you?
And if he did mean "annualcreditreport.com", the site is honest as honest can be. Its the agencies the site SENDS YOU TO that try to scam you into buying something while you're there.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: If he meant freecreditreport.com, then that means he didn't read the article and is just talking out of his ass and shouldn't have commented in the first place.
I got this a little while ago and for a second I thought they were trying to say that my account had already been compromised.
"Why are they offering me a free credit report? Did something happen? Oh wait..."
@DillonSketch: TransUnion is the only one I can't get through annualcreditreport.com but that's because they can't figure out how to verify my identity.
wellsfargo has been doing this to me at least twice a month, if you look at their papers for more than 10 seconds it's not free at all, only an idiot would fall for this, or possibly someone who's illiterate.
never take anything a credit card gives you. i once cashed a 10 dollar check, figuring i'd just cancel after the free month, but believe me the hassle of cancelling "creditwatch" or whatever it was called was way more of a pain than to justify the $10