It is among the three largest CRAs in the United States, the other two being Equifax and TransUnion. These CRAs obtain relevant information related to the creditworthiness of consumers and offer credit reports as well as credit scores to various creditors and other companies. This question is quite relevant because many consumers do not know, for example, whether Experian charges a monthly fee for credit monitoring or something else.
Is There a Monthly Cost of Using Experian?
The answer to this question is therefore no – Experian CreditWorks does not have a monthly fee just to access your credit report or the simple credit tracking services. Nevertheless, they are available for free but have paid additions that allow the users to avail more services than the standard ones.
Free Credit Report Access
To obtain a free credit report, visit annualcreditreport.com, the government-mandated credit report website, and request one credit report from each agency one time per year. This way you can see your credit status in your Experian credit report and even contest some of the items on it without paying for a monthly or yearly subscription.
However, credit scores are not available from the free annual credit reports that are provided through annualcreditreport.com. Normally, one would pay to get a FICO credit score from Experian, but one would need to enroll for any of the free products such as the credit monitoring service or the credit score application for smartphones.
Free Credit Monitoring & Other Services
Here are several free products that Experian provides that will enable you to watch your credit in Experian without any monthly charges. These include:
- My Experian credit report and FICO credit score – register on Experian. com to access your credit report and credit score information.
- Credit alerts and monitoring for free – With Experian, users receive free email alerts whenever their Experian credit file undergoes changes in form that may warrant suspicion or rectification.
- CreditMatch smartphone app – The most recent credit score financial statement can be accessed through the CreditMatch smartphone application which can be downloaded through iPhone and Android.
To clarify, although Experian offers monthly charges for its services if you remain within the company’s free services, you will not incur this fee. They provide this basic service for free as a source of reaching out to consumers who may, later on, patronize their other alternative paid services. This way of creating awareness makes it easy for you to consider their upgrades if you are an account holder and you are often checking the information held in the account.
The above analysis shows that Experian has paid for products that it offers to its clients in a bid to help them improve their credit scores as well as to generate profit for the company.
Although Experian does not charge consumers monthly fees for using their basic credit report services and credit monitoring, Experian does provide consumers with enhanced products beyond the basics which do come with fees.
Some of the paid Experian products that may require monthly payments include:
- Premium Credit Monitoring – For the monthly subscription between $14. 99-24. 99/month, premium monitoring offers more options such as 3-bureau credit reports and scores, alerts, identity theft insurance, and fast customer service response.
- CreditLock/CreditWorks Premium – Experian offers CreditLock and CreditWorks as its identity theft protection solutions. The Premium versions include fraud insurance and are available at a monthly fee that ranges from $14. 99-$24. 99 per month.
- Business Credit Advantage Pro – Paid small business credit profile that costs $49. 99 per month and also provides credit scores, access to information about your credit profile with Dun & Bradstreet, alert services, and other tools.
These are the high-end products that come with monthly subscription fees for additional services in addition to the credit information, and these include; credit monitoring, protection against identity theft, insurance products, and quick customer service.
Specific Circumstances Under Which Monthly Fees Could be Charged
While simply accessing your annual free credit report or using Experian's free base-level services will not incur any monthly fees, there are a handful of scenarios when you could end up with charges or membership fees from Experian:
- You subscribe to any of the paid credit monitoring plans offered by Experian that come with monthly fees. This would include such services as Premium Plus, and Identity Works among others which one has to subscribe to a monthly or yearly membership program.
- First, you receive a free trial offer—say, for a credit-rating service from Experian— but neglect to cancel before the trial is up. Some of the free trials will make you a subscriber and you will be charged credit or cash for being a member.
- You buy credits for one credit report or score but sign up for the ‘subscription’ version rather than a one-time report. This may lead to a reverse funnel where the customer is charged monthly fees. It means that if a person is a careful reader, especially during the signup process, then it will be easy for him/her to know what is required when he/she signs up.
- Here you buy identity theft protection services or credit improvement software that have monthly costs associated with them. The same experts apply to fraud insurance products available in Experian as well the insurance products. Read the fine print!
As long as one is cautious not to convert to any premium trials or go for subscription-based credit monitoring or monthly fee credit monitoring, then one can effectively use the basic free services such as the annual credit report. com and basic credit monitoring without thereby incurring monthly charges with Experian. However, if one is to go for more enhanced identity protection services, then, it is expected that these shall attract a monthly subscription fee of between $14. 99 and $29. 99.
This article explains the steps required to cancel Paid Experian products.
If you do sign up for a paid Experian product with monthly billing but decide you want to cancel, you can take the following steps:
- Most popular Experian services are available after you sign in to your account; if you do not have one, check the section with account logins in the emails received after canceling the subscription.
- Go to your profile and click on Account Settings; scroll down to ‘Subscriptions’ or ‘Billing. ’
- Locate the subscription you wish to unsubscribe from and look for the section that allows for canceling membership, subscription, or service.
- Choose to stop monthly autopay and payments should stop by the next billing cycle if done. Confirm cancellation was processed.
The general procedure to do this is that, for most of the paid products of Experian, one is allowed to manage or cancel the subscription through the internet once they are logged in to their account dashboard. It also lets you switch off monthly charges swiftly if you do not require some of the premium services anymore.
But please ensure that cancellation is successful in order not to be charged again next month! Regarding the cancellation of paid programs, it is not very difficult with Experian, but to secure yourself, you should read the instructions carefully while subscribing to free trials or subscription services so that you know what you have to do if you decide not to pay the monthly fees.
The Bottom Line
Importantly, both look at your credit report through the website www. annualcreditreport. com and using services of Experian free credit report do not involve monthly charges or subscriptions. However, many of the higher levels of identity protection, superior monitoring services, business credit files, and credit improvement services do have monthly fees. There are several steps you can follow to prevent being charged monthly by Experian: while signing up for the service, read the details carefully, and if you do not want to pay for the paid programs, cancel them properly.
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