Experian offers 3-bureau credit monitoring for under $5/month
Experian Consumer Direct, (aka ConsumerInfo.com) which is a division of one of the three main credit bureaus, announced a new low priced product called Triple AlertSM, which I believe is the lowest priced three-bureau credit monitoring product at a cost of $4.95 per month. It’s available at www.TripleAlert.com.
This is my take on it. First of all, don’t buy the bull about daily monitoring being better than weekly monitoring. In my experience it doesn’t mean anything. I know a former technology executive at Experian and a couple of years ago he told me that Experian (which is the market leader) only loads the data from their mainframe in batches once every 30 or 90 days, so checking daily or weekly is useless—the data isn’t changing during that time! Sounds nice but it’s marketing BS.
Second, if this product truly gives you three bureau monitoring for $4.95 a month, and there’s nothing missing or hidden that detracts from the value of it (a pretty big if given Experian’s track record), that’s a price that cannot be beat. I am currently paying $12.95 a month for 3 bureau monitoring through IdentityGuard (Intersections, Inc.), so I can’t think of a reason not to switch to Triple Alert. If someone out there knows a reason send me an email. Here is a link to the terms and conditions for Triple Alert, check them out if you want to search for something nefarious in this exceptionally low price. I didn’t find anything in one quick glance. If you DO order this service, do yourself a favor and UNCHECK the box for “FREE Credit Newsletter & Special Offers.” Nothing good can come from that.
Third, I believe that consumers shouldn’t have to pay to monitor or see their credit data a reasonable number of times per year. Now, the credit bureaus make a compelling argument—they say that it costs them money to provide you the data and build the systems to do so. Which is true. But I believe that the fact that this is YOUR personal data and it can have a massive (often negative) effect on your life trumps their argument. So as long as the CRA’s can make money off your data (much of which they get at no cost to themselves), then you should have a right to see it and be notified if something is happening to it. It’s totally upside down that your personal identity and credit data could be compromised by a thief and you have to PAY to see what is happening.
Fourth, it appears that this new low priced product may be the start of a price war among the competing providers of credit monitoring. This has to be good for consumers—and it’s bad for folks like Intersections which I believe is the largest third-party credit data company and is struggling as a public company. It will be interesting to see how the competitors respond to this.
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