Class Action Lawsuit Leads to Free Credit Scores and Credit Reports

Several days ago, I learned at My Two Dollars that TransUnion has settled a class action lawsuit by giving out free credit reports and scores, as often as you want them, for 6 months. The class action suit has its own website where you can sign up for this.

But before you hustle on over there, let’s ask why they had a class action lawsuit filed against them in the first place. It’s because they (allegedly, one must say, since I suppose it hasn’t been proved but settled instead) sold customer profiles to a third party. I haven’t been able to clarify if this was just the customers who’d signed up with their credit monitoring service, or if it was anyone. As one of the three big credit bureaus, they have access to everyone’s personal information, after all.

I wasn’t fond of TransUnion in the first place.

When I was trying to find out whether or not I had a credit history, I tried signing up at all the major credit bureaus, including TransUnion’s “True Credit.” Back in March I wrote about how I was still getting e-mails from them. Moreover, their site was so poorly designed that I wouldn’t link to it and won’t visit it to find out if it’s better. You know those popups that keep pleading with you to stay on the site? They have those. I doubt it works for anyone . . . for me, they’re more motivation to leave.

Now, I would guess that they learned their lesson and won’t be selling customer profiles again (any time soon). Whether or not you would like to take advantage of this or not, is really up to you.

You can always use the other two bureaus to check your credit report (through annual credit report.com) if you haven’t checked it in a while. But if you are in the market for a credit report & score, then the class action website might be the place for you. You can also check out the Summary Notice (PDF).

According to the site, you’ll have to sign up before September 24th to get the benefits.

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