Today I wanted to research the free credit report offers by different companies. My Explorer program did an MSN search, I clicked on "credit report" and got a screen recommending the "Top Online Deals for Credit Monitoring" These were Privacy Matters, TrueCredit and Citi.
Then I went to a site called CreditMonitorGuide.com. This site also touted Privacy Matters and gave it a 5-star rating.
This gave me a sense of security about Privacy Matters. (These web pages are obviously bogus, and a very manipulative ploy.)
I signed on to the Privacy Matters web site, filled in the info, and waited for my free credit report to come "instantly" as promised. 24 hours later it was not here.
However, I did get an email from [email protected], instructing me on how to go back in the web site, sign-in and get my credit report. I called the customer service phone # and just waited. Zip, zero, nada.
I started looking at other credit report sites, and came across one called "24Protect Plus" and the Privacy Matters site is almost a carbon-copy of it. Saved them from having to develop any new ideas.
At this point I became very suspicious, because it asked for yet more financial info about me. So I did some searching and landed at usacomplaints.com. No real surprises there.
I am going to monitor my credit card account daily to see when the first charge hits for $1.00, and then I'm going to follow the directions here for getting it off my bill. Next time I'll do a search in Rip-Of-Report before doing business with Internet companies.
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