Responding to Thursdays column about the job scam and creditreport.com, reader Janet Holoweiko wrote to say it’s worse than I thought.
“You say that people who get their “free” credit report may end up with surprise monthly charges on their credit card,” Holoweiko wrote.”Actually, they’re even more nefarious than that. My husband got his ‘free’ credit report without realizing that he was also authorizing a monthly review for a fee. But they didn’t charge his credit card; they took the money directly out of one of
his checking accounts. He’d never provided an account number, so apparently they obtained that on their own in the credit review process
“It was a small account my husband rarely uses, so he
wasn’t checking the monthly statements because he didn’t think it had any
activity. Creditreport.com made monthly withdrawals for several months – until
my husband got an overdraft notice (and overdraft charge) from the bank and
became aware of the scheme.”
