Do I have to pay to use Equifax?

Posted on: 30 Jul 2024

Equifax is among the largest credit reporting agencies in the United States operating alongside Experian and TransUnion. These agencies obtain consumer data and provide credit reports and credit scores to credit providers and other interested business entities. This leads to another frequently asked question, namely whether one needs to pay to obtain a copy of their credit report from Equifax. Or are there open sources that may be useful for the paper?

Here is what you need to know:

Free Annual Credit Reports The other law that applies to credit reports is the Fair Credit Reporting Act FCRA which mandates the three credit reporting bureaus to give consumers a free credit report once every twelve months. You should be able to get your free reports from AnnualCreditReportcom a website developed by the three agencies. This enables you to obtain the Equifax Experian and TransUnion reports of your credit for free after one year.

That being said, what you get in the report may be free but you will have to pay if you want to know your actual credit score. As is evidenced, credit reports and credit scores are related but not the same. A credit report contains details on your credit profile to the last detail while your credit score is a three-figure number that condenses your creditworthiness. Numerous sites post that they offer free credit scores but then entice consumers with a membership or a subscription fee to access the score. AnnualCreditReport.com offers free reports only and not Equity Scores.

Thus the answer to whether you can and should indeed make use of your legal rights to obtain a copy of your Equifax credit report is indeed yes. This lets you scrutinize what you are reporting to notice such damaging errors that could be lowering your score or exposing you to fraud and overall credit health status. The only thing I would advise everyone is to be careful with the offers for free scores because they are often associated with payments for full access. So, you will have to download it yourself and it does not have your score included in it.

Equifax Services and Offers However, other credit monitoring services Equifax has, apart from the guaranteed free annual credit report, have some fees attached to them. For instance, Equifax CompletePremier offers the checking of your Equifax report daily membership in getting monthly updates on your credit score and identity theft insurance at approximately twenty dollars monthly. CompletePremier also provides you with the opportunity to secure and unsecure your Equifax report so that criminals cannot access credit.

Equifax’s Premier package which costs approximately eighteen dollars monthly offers credit report monitoring and identity protection as listed above, but it does not include the score update service or report locking features. But there are also very simple packages that offer just monthly online credit reports which cost about fifteen dollars monthly.

Well, to sum up, Equifax does provide paid products that may be of interest to you and fit your specific requirements. However, the legal rights of the consumers to get free access to your annual Equifax report are also protected. Some of the features are available for free while others require you to pay for the monitoring services and for $1 you get all the essential information that you need to watch out for identity theft and deal with report errors.

In What Situations Paid Products Are Helpful This means that their paid products such as the CompletePremier or Premier can be of some[1]use to some consumers. For those who have already fallen victim to identity theft or those who are considered in a high-risk category, then options such as the credit freeze under CompletePremier can provide further added security. Some consumers also appreciate receiving score updates every month rather than just once per year to better observe the effects the varied financial choices they make in their day-to-day lives have on their scoring with lenders.

As stated, more often than not, trusting credit monitoring to paid services is quite unnecessary. It is enough to check the reports for which you are guaranteed free access at least once a year. And there are other free ways to access your credit scores at any time such as:

Almost all issuers allow cardholders to routinely receive the updated number on their account websites or statements for free.

Some of the other applications that are freely available for use include the Credit Karma application where the users are allowed to access credit scores for free, albeit for the sake of providing marketing information.

However, remember that, depending on your risks and requirements, the free Equifax report will be enough in many cases. The additional monitoring services can offer some extra protection and notification services but the price is quite costly for the consumer situation which is not so important for the majority of users.

Getting Your Free Report To take advantage of your free annual credit report rights, you can make your request online, by phone, or via mail:

Online: AnnualCreditReport.com
Phone: Call 1-877-322-8228
Mail: Request for Annual Credit Report P. O. Box 105281 Atlanta GA 30348-5281

When it comes to verifying your identity and accessing your report data you will be required to input details such as your full name, address, social security number, and date of birth. This process is safe but if you are still wary of possible identity theft issues you also have the option to fax your request and receive your report through mail.

If you have any queries make sure that you ask for a reminder to repeat your request for the report after twelve months for all the agencies. Spreading these requests all year, for instance, Equifax today Experian in four months, TransUnion in eight months ensures that one receives updated reports all year round. The trick of splitting your requests helps in a way that you can’t have long intervals without credit changes being monitored.

The Takeaway It is very simple to get your Equifax credit report and everyone is entitled to it by federal law. Consumers need to exercise this right by requesting their report at AnnualCreditReportcom every year. First of all, and much to the contrary of what one might think, it is important to know that Equifax cannot make you pay for accessing your report according to the provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This means that you can keep track of your reports for free rather than paying for the credit monitoring subscription in most circumstances. That said, there is more to offer from Equifax in terms of monitoring services if you feel that the extra protection is worth paying for to recoup the expenses.