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Too often you hear the complaint that a credit monitoring service is billing whether the customer wants the service or not. This is a shame, and it is ironic that one of the reasons you want the service is to find and remove erroneous debt items on your report.

One common solution to this is to use a debit card rather than a credit card when you purchase a service. If a service continues to bill after you’ve finished with the service, you can always cancel the debit card.

Canceling a credit card can have a negative impact on your credit file though. Using a debit card saves you this headache.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Oftentimes credit monitoring services are considered an expensive waste of time. Oftentimes you can accomplish just as much towards fixing your credit on your own not spending any money.

On average, a credit monitoring service will cost about $10 per month, per report. It is true sometimes that can monitor your own credit report for less than the average cost of these services.

However, sometimes people like the peace of mind of hiring a professional service and/or online software to do this action for them. Besides, you may want to receive reports from all three agencies at once.

With many monitoring services all three reports are included, but you may be required to request all of them at once. At the very most it could cost you about $36 a month or $432 a year to do this, unless of course you receive discounted prices as mentioned above (approximately $10 per month).

Regardless of what you pay, what you would receive for that $432 per year varies. It depends upon the services that you choose. However, in general you can expect that you’ll be alerted if someone applies for new credit.

You also have the luxury of being told if something suspicious turns up on your credit report. Most monitoring services also come with identity theft insurance that will help you recuperate the costs necessary to repair any errors that occur.

You also have the option to use one of a variety of identity theft services. On the other hand, you can monitor your own credit report even for as low as $8 per report.

You may have to do a little bit more work when you monitor your own report. However, you can save some money.

On the other hand, many people find that the expense of a monitoring service is much easier. They would rather pay this extra fee than monitor their own credit reports.

Free credit report services are different than credit monitoring services. The free credit report is what you are entitled to by law. The credit monitoring services are different.

The Distinction

Every U.S. consumer is entitled to a free credit report by law. However, no one is required to receive a free copy of their credit score. You should remember this when trying to obtain the complementary files to which you are entitled.

It will clear up some confusion and help open your eyes so you are not misled. This is sometimes what happens when people are lured into so-called “free credit reports” or “free credit scores.”

On the other hand, you sometimes monitoring service could be beneficial to you personally. It can help you keep track of your files and it will help you beware of when people are stealing your identity to benefit them somehow.

Usage and Tips

Of course, receiving a free credit report is only half the battle. Knowing what to do with it when you get it and knowing what good it will do is also helpful.

Once you have the credit reports, you need to examine them very carefully. For instance, you should do the following:

• Look for duplicate accounts or accounts that belong to someone else.
• Keep an eye out for accounts which have exceeded the time frame for reporting.
• Find out about the statute of limitations of how long a debt can be reported.
• Make sure you learn how long a creditor can try to collect a debt.
• Once you have found the inaccurate and erroneous, use written correspondence to dispute it.

About Disputes

When examining your credit report you also may need some guidelines to help you dispute errors. You can adhere to the following tips:

• Be explicit and brief in your written correspondence about why the listings need to be deleted.
• May very well take writing a few letters and not just one to get results so to not give up.
• Be patient when in the disputing process. After a creditor receives your dispute that creditor is entitled to take time verify the accuracy of or error of a disputed item.

There are many ways to obtain a free credit report. They are issued by both companies who are following the law but also companies that run a scam. Therefore, you should be careful.

In any case, going through the steps of obtaining a free credit report is quite easy. It is an action highly recommended for anyone who wants to know where he/she stands in the eyes of creditors.