CIC Triple Advantage

I received a $14.95 charge to my Amex this month. When I signed up with freecreditreport.com it was not blazingly obvious that when you sign up to get the "free" credit report you are actually committing yourself to a subscription service. Unless you cancel within a given amount of time, you will be charged a monthly "fee" for a credit monitoring service (which, by the way, you can have the credit bureaus put a flag on your credit for nothing, if you're really that concerned. They will keep an eye out for fraudulent activity). I went to freecreditreport.com to see if there was any disclaimer about the subscription service. Pretty sure this wasn't there when I signed up, but there it was, front and center.

Taken from freecreditreport.com's website:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

When you order your free report here, you will begin your free trial membership in Triple AdvantageSM Credit Monitoring. If you don't cancel your membership within the 7-day trial period**, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership.

ConsumerInfo.com, Inc. and Freecreditreport.com are not affiliated with the annual free credit report program. Under a new Federal law, you have the right to receive a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies. To request your free annual report under that law, you must go to www.annualcreditreport.com.

The fact that they have the word "free" in the name is misleading. There's nothing free about this service. The REAL free service is put out by the government because, by law, you are entitled to one free credit report per year. Any reports after that you have to pay for.

I am filing a complaint with the FTC and I would urge anyone who sees these miscellaneous charges show up on their credit cards to do the same. We have to show these businesses that consumers are the ones in charge, not them. They exist because we allow them to, not the other way around.