Credit-Reporting Agency To Stop Giving Free Copies

You can’t get credit for nothing anymore.

Experian, one of the nation’s three dominant credit-reporting agencies, said it will stop offering free annual credit reports to consumers. Beginning March 1, individuals will have to pay $8 to inspect the files that influence everything from credit cards to mortgages.

Experian, formerly the creditreporting service of TRW Inc., has produced 5 million free reports since it started offering the once-a-year freebie in April 1992.

Two competitors, Equifax and TransUnion, never followed suit.

Experian Chief Executive Officer D. Van Skilling said the cost increasingly “has become a significant competitive disadvantage.”

The problem wasn’t the free reports themselves, Experian vice president Maxine Sweet said. The problem was that many consumers wanted to question individual items, triggering expensive reviews.

“Credit clinics,” which offer to clean customers’ credit histories, commonly advise clients to dispute every item on their credit reports. Several credit clinics that claimed they could fix bad credit have been forced to shut down.

Skilling said credit clinics took advantage of Experian’s free report offer. As a result, he said, his company handled more than its share of disputed reports.

Federal law still guarantees free credit reports to consumers if they have been denied credit. And under a new law, which takes effect in October, people can seek free credit reports annually if they certify that they are unemployed and seeking a job, or receiving welfare or believe their credit file contains wrong information due to fraud.