Does a reliable credit monitoring service exist?

February 9, 2007 1:33 PM

For a variety of reasons, I've decided to look into a credit monitoring service. Help me find a reputable one.

Basically, I want to be able to go to one place and pull copies of my reports from each of the big three credit bureaus. If I go to one at a time, it's a pain in the ass and I get charged $$ each time I do it.
I am well aware of the yearly free report. I want to pull the reports much more often than that.
I am also aware that each bureau seems to own their own credit monitoring services. I want to know if you lazyweb residents have used a particular service and found it to be better than the others. Yes, I have searched Google, but I don't have time to sift through the 15,000,000 results. I'm looking for personal experiences with credit monitoring services.

Oh, and Mac friendly services get bonus points.

posted by drstein to work & money (4 comments total)

I used wells fargo's id theft service briefly, and it seemed like it would work well for what you need. You get the information from all three bureaus with daily monitoring and notification of any changes. It's $12.99/month.
posted by logic vs love at 2:09 PM on February 9, 2007

Citibank's IdentityMonitor costs $12.95 a month, all three bureaus, etc etc. They also have a service called Credit Monitoring, which seems to be the same thing.
posted by Xere at 2:25 PM on February 9, 2007

Consider the various Equifax products/services. I have the Credit Watch Gold with 3-in-1 Monitoring ($12.95/month).
posted by ericb at 3:28 PM on February 9, 2007

I also have equifax gold, for free (smiley) because my employer lost a laptop full of you-know-what (frowny).
It does watch (I just got a monthly nothing-happened email)
but you can only get 1 full report per year per agency.

If you don't have a 'special situation', you can likely get one free credit report per year (it depends on the state you live in). There are 3 agencies, so you can spread them out to get one each 4 months, which is plenty.
Here are phone #s (or you can use the web, but it's harder to find the free stuff). Remember, you want FREE!

equifax 800 997 2493
experian 888 397 3742
transunion 800 888 4213

They ask some identifying questions, and mail the report to you--they know your address. In fact, they may know more about you than you do.
posted by hexatron at 6:09 PM on February 9, 2007