Bookofezekiel3's Blog

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/your-money/credit-scores/03scores.html

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The company that owns freecreditreport.com is deliberately diverting people from a government-mandated site, … and using the reports as a lure for a [not-free] $14.95 monthly service that alerts subscribers to important changes in their credit status.
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Yet for the vast majority of consumers whose credit status doesn’t change quickly or drastically, a monitoring service is a waste of money…Keeping a close eye on your bills and checking your credit report [once] a year is enough.

And that can be done without spending a penny because the government requires the three major credit bureaus — Experian, which owns freecreditreport.com, Equifax and TransUnion — to provide one free report annually to consumers.
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Still, Experian continued to spend heavily on marketing that played to the anxiety many Americans feel about their credit amid the financial crisis.
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Experian is the biggest player in the lucrative niche of selling monthly monitoring. Nine million people are spending a total of $650 million to $700 million annually on the services, according to Carter Malloy, a Stephens Inc. analyst. Experian’s market share is more than twice that of its three main competitors combined. To replenish its rolls, the company relies heavily on its slacker ads, spending $54 million in 2008 to blanket the airwaves, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

The monitoring business is profitable enough that big credit card companies, including Capital One and Discover, now partner with Experian to sell private-label versions of the monitoring service directly to their customers, taking a cut of the fees and giving the rest to Experian.
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{
The New York Times writer has written the article as complicated and as round-about as possible.
Here is the shortened version:

freecreditreport.com is a scam.
Use freecreditreport.GOV
Also,
any organization that sells you “monthly monitoring” of your credit score, or tell you that you need to do so, is also selling a scam. It’s a needless expense for nearly everybody.

So if you are an average person, use freecreditreport.GOV and check your credit score once a year, for free. More than that, you do not need.
}