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In transition from spring to summer, there are constant temperature changes, which have the ability to lead to drastic weather changes as well.  This weather can include rain, thunder, lightening, high winds, tornadic activity and flooding.  To be more aware of the weather in your area several news stations offer a free or pay service to update you via email and mobile phone of severe weather in your area.  Below is some info on one such program in the Kansas City area (Channel 9, Weather Call).  It is pretty neat and in my opinion well worth the $6 a year.

In cooperation with Channel 9 are bringing a state-of-the art personal storm warning service to our 8 county listening area. WeatherCall™ combines advanced technology now in use by the National Weather Service with robust emergency telephone notification. Chief Meteorologist, Bryan Busby will call you on the telephone and/or send you an email if your location falls inside a specific warning area, 24 hours a day. This potentially life saving service is available for a subscription rate of only $6.95  per year for new customers $6.00 for renewal . Renewal 1 year from original date of purchase.

The WeatherCall system is continuously monitoring the National Weather Service’s NOAA weatherwire.  Unlike the decades-old county-wide warning method, WeatherCall uses the new NWS storm-based warning technology, GIS (computerized mapping), and then compares a subscriber’s exact location to the specific warning area.  When a severe weather warning includes your location, the system will immediately notify you through telephone calls, SMS text messaging to your mobile phone, email or all of these methods that severe weather is in your IMMEDIATE area.

As we discussed in our post about a week ago, we are going to review and evaluate all of the major credit bureau report fraud alert services. These services are also called identity theft detection services. While we make no money doing this, we believe that this service will assist our business customers substantially. I hope that you can get some valuable information about these services in order to protect your personal credit score which is critical to getting loans and credit for your business in today’s difficult credit environment. Your personal credit score is just as important as your business credit score since most bankers, credit card companies, etc will look at both of them before lending.

As we discussed in the previous post, each of the major credit bureau companies own their own credit card fraud alert services. These services are great for many reasons. These services will let you know if anyone is attempting to use your personal information such as social security numbers, address, credit card numbers, etc to fraudulently get credit. But, these services are also important to see your most recently updated credit report and credit score.

I thought that we would start off with www.freecreditreport.com since it is the most popular identity theft protection service on the Internet. You will not only see this service advertised on the web, but it also uses lots of T.V. commercials to sell the product.

Free Credit Report (or www.freecreditreport.com) is owned by Experian which is one of the three major personal credit bureau’s. And probably the most important credit bureau as it relates to gaining credit from credit card companies. It seems that most of the major credit card companies like American Express (Amex), Advanta Financial Corp, First National Bank of Omaha. But, I also think that it is the worst service among the three major credit card companies. This is not to say that Experian does not have a good service since they do, but it is definitely not Freecreditreport.com. The service that Experian has that is much better than www.freecreditreport.com is called Credit Expert or www.creditexpert.com…..and Credit Expert at $11.95 per month is less expensive then Freecreditreport.com at $14.95 per month. It does make you wonder why the biggest service they have is www.freecreditreport.com. We will devote a blog post in the coming weeks about Credit Expert or www.creditexpert.com and explain its benefits and it advantages over www.freecreditreports.com.

Here is a brief summary of what www.freecreditreport.com can do for you.

1. www.freecreditreport.com will provide your email alerts throughout the month when anything changes within your credit report that could lead to identity theft such as new credit inquiries, change of address, etc.
2. www.freecreditreport.com will provide you your credit score once per month.
3. www.freecreditreport.com will provide you a new credit report once per month.
4. They will make certain to market every service they have while you are reviewing your credit report and score which is very annoying.
5. www.freecreditreport.com will charge your $14.95 per month and only give you the information from Experian. If you want the other credit bureaus information than it will cost you $24.95 per month.

Here is a brief summary of what www.freecreditreport.com will NOT do for you:

1. www.freecreditreport.com will not update your credit score during the month.
2. www.freecreditreport.com will not provide you an updated credit report during the month.
3. Negative credit items generally stay on your record and effect your credit score for 7 years, but www.freecreditreport.com will only show you the last 24 months of payments.
4. www.freecreditreport.com does not have a way to look at your entire credit history simultaneously for ALL creditors without clicking each and every creditor. They need a button that can be clicked to allow a customer that option.
5. www.freecreditreport.comwill not inform you during the month if your credit balances change during the month. For example, if your credit balance on your Visa or MasterCard goes up by $5000 during the month due to fraud, www.freecreditreport.com will NOT notify you.

In summary, I believe that www.freecreditreport.comis overpriced and does not deliver enough to warrant the service. I believe that there are a lot better identity theft detection services (Fraud alert services) on the Internet and we will evaluate those in future posts.

Great Question!

Identity theft in the United States has become huge and we are seeing ads daily for services that you can subscribe to monthly to watch your credit account for any potential activity. These services then alert you via email that something has changed on your personal credit file.

Beginning in the 1990’s, banks and credit issuers began using your credit bureau scores as one of the primarly tools in deciding to extend credit. The days of relying on a personal relationship with a banker has disappeared. While a personal relationship with a banker is still important, federal and state banking regulations have required them to rely on the credit score. One of the banking industries concerns is if they lend to someone with a low credit score (because they know the individual real well) , then regulators will challenge them as to why they gave loans to some people with low scores, but not to other people. Thus, your credit score is critical.

We thought that we could use this blog to discuss the differences between the services and make a recommendation to you as to which service you should use if you decide to subscribe to one. We are not affiliated with any of these services and get no revenue from them so this is just an honest evalution of the service. We will be using this blog for all sorts of issues that we believe will assist our customers. We will not use it  to exclusively discuss our industry or promote our products. We want it to be a place where consumers and businesses can come to get some great information.

Before signing up for the services, we began researching the various services on the web. I have to admit that I was frustrated since I could not find much independent information on the various services. There is a lot of information out on the web about Identity Theft Protection, but almost all of it is written by affliliates of the various Indentity Theft Services. Since these websites want to primarily sell you the service, they do not provide much honest feedback.

Before we get started, let me explain a little about the industry. There are three primary credit service bureaus that follow the credit patterns of most Americans. These credit bureaus are Equifax, Experian and Transunion.  Each of these companies provide a monthly Identity Theft Protection service and some of them actually provide several different services.

In addition to these Identity Theft Services, there are independent companies that buy the credit bureau data from Equifax, Experian and Transunion and then use it to provide a service to you. Examples of Companies that are independent service providers are Identity Guard, My Credit Privacy and Life Lock.

We are going to begin a series of blog articles on the various services beginning next week starting with the services provided by the three primary credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and Transunion.