“Free” Credit Report?

I don’t know about you, but I love the freecreditreport.com commercials. They’re the ones with that ubiquitous trio that sings about the perils of bad credit from all kinds of weird locations – a subcompact; a Renaissance Fair, a cheap seafood restaurant. You can check out all 9 of the commercials here:

But there is one slight problem with the commercials. The “free” credit report isn’t exactly … um … free. You can get a free credit report, if you enroll in the monthly credit monitoring service and cancel within a week. But the FTC thinks that’s a few too many strings. It’s requiring Experian (the parent company) to start running disclosures on the commercials as of April 1. I’m I the only one who finds it slightly ironic that the disclosures start running on April Fool’s Day? Read more about it here.