there are a lot of sneaky companies out there for sure!!! a lot of the "free credit report" and monitoring sites are only free when you read the fine print and realize they charge you a monthly fee (in essence, you are becoming a member of program).
if you are only interested in your credit report and not your scores, i think the safest way to get them are through each of the 3 major credit reporting bureaus. you are allowed one free report per bureau per year. i would go to each website and find out how to get your free report.
now if you are interested in credit monitoring and/or obtaining your credit scores, i use myfico.com. i get the suze orman kit (only when there is a discount code floating around) which gives you access to 3 credit scores and reports per kit. there are also other aspect of the suze orman kit which are great too. for example, my last apartment WRONGFULLY sent me to collections for a bogus outstanding bill. in the suze orman kit, there are canned letters for each of the credit bureaus where you fill in the information and it populates the letters. when i did this my credit was fixed in about 45 days (this situation dropped my credit 130 points!!!) and my credit was back to where it was supposed to be. the kit made it really easy to do
i am looking forward to reading other posts because i am passionate about keeping my credit good. the suze orman kit even gives you tips on how you can make your score higher. last i checked mine was about 802. hope that helps
