Michael wanted to pay a copy of his Transunion credit report. In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem: he gives Transunion money, they give him a credit report. If only it worked that way. It turns out that just buying a single copy of your report from Transunion is like trying to buy a mobile phone in America from a retail store: you can get it for “free” with a subscription to monitoring service, or as part of a package deal with other services, but you can’t just hand over cash for a credit report.

While visiting Credit Karma today to renew my score I noticed my score had gone down. One of the reasons given was a new public record. Since I did not do anything I can recall recently to have a public record derogatory comment placed on my credit report and there was no mention of anything on my Equifax report, I decided to investigate further.

Credit Karma is based on the Transunion credit report so I tried to pull just that report from AnnualCreditReport.com. Unfortunately, it had not been a year since I last pulled that report, so I was ineligible for the free report. “That’s ok,” I thought. “I’ll just pull a current one and pay for it.” Well, upon visiting either Transunion.com or Truecredit.com I found that I could not actually pull a single report from Transunion. The only products available was their 3 bureau credit monitoring service, a 3 bureau single report (I had already checked Equifax earlier where I do subscribe to their report service), or that Zendough site which cannot apparently be canceled.

So, as I’m sitting at the Transunion site, a little chat window pops up for live costumer service. I decided to ask about the single report. The following is the transcript:

Thank you for choosing Truecredit.com. A representative will be with you shortly.

You are now chatting with [Agent].

[Agent]: Hello! Welcome to TrueCredit. My name is [Agent]. How can I help you today?

You: I just want a single credit report from transunion. How do I obtain that? I’ve used up my annual credit report already.

[Agent]: I will help you on this,.

[Agent]: I understand that you want to view your Credit Report from Transunion. Am I correct?

You: Yes

[Agent]: You may take advantage of our free trial for 7 days through which you will be able to view your Credit Report and Score from Transunion at free.

You: No, I do not want that. I already have a monitoring service and I likely won’t remember to cancel it.

[Agent]: Have you done business with TrueCredit or TransUnion in the past?

You: Yes

[Agent]: You may also order for a one time report through which you will be able to get the Credit Report from all the Credit reporting agencies and free Transunion Credit Score at $29.95 if you do not wish to take advantage of our 3- Bureau Credit Monitoring Subscription Service.

You: But I can’t pull just my Transunion score? I’ve already seen my Equifax and Experian scores recently.

[Agent]: I’m sorry. You will not be able to get your Transunion Credit Report and Score separately.

[Agent]: I suggest you to signup for our free trial through which you will be able to view your Transunion Report at free.

You: That’s ridiculous. Well, I can see I can go no further here. Goodbye.

That confirmed it for me. Transunion wants to upsell and they don’t want to be bothered with individual reports. I didn’t see this mentioned on your site yet, so I thought I’d let you know. I’ve always had trouble getting my Transunion report, so this does not surprise me in the least. I suppose I will have to get my 3 bureau report to see what the public record is. I just hate not being able to check my reports on my terms. Thanks for reading this.

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