The High Cost of a ‘Free Credit Report’

The High Cost of a ‘Free Credit Report’

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

EARLIER this year, Kris Steele, a Web developer in Madison, Wis., who was planning to buy a car, decided to check his credit score.

Mr. Steele, 27, remembered a number of commercials for FreeCreditReport.com featuring a young slacker singing about various life problems — living in the in-laws’ basement, dressing as a pirate to wait on tables in a seafood restaurant — all because he had neglected to check his credit score. The ads were lighthearted and catchy, with lyrics like: “F-R-E-E, that spells free creditreport.com, baby. Saw their ads on my TV, thought about going but was too lazy.”

So Mr. Steele headed to the site and filled out the information form, including his credit-card number, which he thought the site needed to verify his identity.

But a couple of months later, Mr. Steele noticed the site had been charging his credit card. While he believed he had signed up for a free report, he had actually enrolled in a credit-monitoring service that cost $14.95 a month. He says he never expected that it would cost anything.

“It’s called FreeCreditReport.com,” he said. “It’s kind of easy to make that assumption. I didn’t see anything in the process of signing up that said, ‘Hey, if you don’t cancel in 30 days or whatever, you’re going to get charged.’ ”

Consumer groups have long objected to sites like FreeCreditReport.com. Consumers may obtain a free credit report each year from the three major agencies, as mandated by an act that Congress passed in 2003. The only authorized site for that is AnnualCreditReport.com.

The three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, are required to offer reports through the authorized AnnualCreditReport.com, but the bureaus also make money from their own credit reports.

Experian, which owns FreeCreditReport.com, increased both its site visitors and new member sign-ups by 20 percent in 2007. The company attributes those increases to its catchy ads.

“We’ve always been a very aggressive marketer,” said Mike Dean, the chief marketing officer for the Experian consumer direct division, which runs FreeCreditReport.com. He said the company had increased its advertising budget by 200 percent over the last five years. The site spent $70.7 million dollars on major media advertising in 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

A previous round of commercials, which began in October, have been a pop-culture hit. There are more than 70 YouTube homages, including one with a 5-year-old singing the ditty, and another with a high-school boy singing “C-A-L-cu-lus A.P., hardest class in history.”

The ads on YouTube have been viewed more than three million times, the company says, and the radio and television ads have run about 90,000 times in the last year.

“We’re just trying to do something that’s talked about and seen and gets passed around in pop culture,” said Steve Sage, an associate creative director at the Martin Agency, which worked on the spots. The agency, based in Richmond, Va., is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

The set of commercials starting Monday features the same three musicians as the previous set. The director, Danny Leiner, has a background in slacker films, like “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.”

The idea behind the existing and the new commercials is to appeal to a young crowd, Mr. Dean said.

“We knew our creative was good, and we were targeting a younger audience,” Mr. Dean said. “That’s exactly what we’ve received with that: we have a lot younger demographic coming into our site.”

On this round of FreeCreditReport.com ads, the lead singer of the band of merry losers finds he can no longer afford to have a car, and downgrades to a bike; attends a Hollywood party, but as a waiter; and plays a character at a Renaissance fair. The ads focus on identity theft rather than on checking one’s credit score, as the previous set did.

“There’s a lot of elements, I think, that help the campaign work as a whole,” said David Muhlenfeld, the copywriter at the Martin Agency who wrote both sets of commercials. “It’s not just a catchy song. The performances of the actors are great, and really, the characters of the singer — and the band — I think a lot of people identify with him. He’s a bit of a lovable loser.”

The contention is not over the ads’ aesthetics, but over their substance. Consumer advocates said the site’s pitch was misleading.

“It’s what I call a protection racket; the companies are charging you a fee and they’re making a promise that it’s going to improve your credit, and protect against identity theft, but in fact it does neither,” said Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the United States Public Interest Research Group. “The sites are designed to trick people into taking on overpriced, useless credit monitoring, and they do so by attempting to make it appear as if you’re going to get something for free.”

The Federal Trade Commission, too, has criticized FreeCreditReport.com. In 2005, the agency settled a case against ConsumerInfo.com, an Experian division that ran FreeCreditReport.com, saying that the advertisements said there was no catch to the report and that the Web site did not have adequate disclosure that the service was not free. Experian paid the F.T.C. $950,000 and had to offer refunds to certain consumers.

On its Web site, the F.T.C. warns about sites other than AnnualCreditReport.com, noting that “in some cases, the ‘free’ product comes with strings attached.” The Florida attorney general is conducting an investigation into FreeCreditReport.com.

Mr. Dean said he could not comment about either case.

FreeCreditReport.com now has a disclosure on its home page saying that it is not affiliated with the annual free credit report program. But that language is in small print on the side of the home page on a subdued background, versus the large font and rich colors promoting enrollment.

Mr. Dean said that he did not think the site was misleading.

“It absolutely is the free credit report,” he said. “It’s not the one by the government, which is why we put the link on our front page of the landing site, and it is a free report. It’s really a test drive for people to understand what’s in that report because a report can be very complex.”

Consumer groups disagree. “It’s of great concern,” said Linda Sherry, director for national priorities of Consumer Action, a San Francisco-based consumer advocacy group. “I think it’s just a shabby way to market anything.”

The ads themselves, she said, were also a problem. “I don’t think they’ve cracked down hard enough on the television and other kinds of radio ads that are deceptive to consumers because there’s no room to put adequate disclosure,” she said.

As the new slate of ads rolls out, one person who will be turning away from the television is Trevor Snyder. Mr. Snyder returned to Georgia in 2006 after a year as a National Guard public-affairs officer in Iraq. He had filed for bankruptcy a few years earlier and was anxious about what had happened to his credit score while he was deployed. At FreeCreditReport.com, he signed up for the report. When he saw the charges on his credit card a few months later, he said, he called the company but had trouble canceling the service.

“I took advantage, I thought, of a good offer,” said Mr. Snyder, 37, an information-technology manager for a construction company. “Unfortunately, I think the offer is purposefully designed to make it easy for you to get your credit report, and then forget that you’ve just signed up for an in-perpetuity fee.”

“My wife comments continuously on their TV commercials because she likes the ditty,” Mr. Snyder said. “I get irritable and tell her that it might be a catchy song, but I don’t like the company.”

An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up

By TARA PARKER-POPE

As a symbol of health and wellness, nothing surpasses the simple push-up.

Practically everyone remembers the actor Jack Palance performing age-defying push-ups during his Oscar acceptance speech. More recently, Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor whose last lecture became an Internet sensation, did push-ups to prove his fitness despite having pancreatic cancer.

“It takes strength to do them, and it takes endurance to do a lot of them,” said Jack LaLanne, 93, the fitness pioneer who astounded television viewers in the 1950s with his fingertip push-ups. “It’s a good indication of what kind of physical condition you’re in.”

The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one’s entire weight is taxing even for the very fit.

“You are just using your own body and your body’s weight,” said Steven G. Estes, a physical education professor and dean of the college of professional studies at Missouri Western State University. “If you’re going to demonstrate any kind of physical strength and power, that’s the easiest, simplest, fastest way to do it.”

But many people simply can’t do push-ups. Health and fitness experts, including the American College of Sports Medicine, have urged more focus on upper-body fitness. The aerobics movement has emphasized cardiovascular fitness but has also shifted attention from strength training exercises.

Moreover, as the nation gains weight, arms are buckling under the extra load of our own bodies. And as budgets shrink, public schools often do not offer physical education classes — and the calisthenics that were once a childhood staple.

In a 2001 study, researchers at East Carolina University administered push-up tests to about 70 students ages 10 to 13. Almost half the boys and three-quarters of the girls didn’t pass.

Push-ups are important for older people, too. The ability to do them more than once and with proper form is an important indicator of the capacity to withstand the rigors of aging.

Researchers who study the biomechanics of aging, for instance, note that push-ups can provide the strength and muscle memory to reach out and break a fall. When people fall forward, they typically reach out to catch themselves, ending in a move that mimics the push-up. The hands hit the ground, the wrists and arms absorb much of the impact, and the elbows bend slightly to reduce the force.

In studies of falling, researchers have shown that the wrist alone is subjected to an impact force equal to about one body weight, says James Ashton-Miller, director of the biomechanics research laboratory at the University of Michigan.

“What so many people really need to do is develop enough strength so they can break a fall safely without hitting their head on the ground,” Dr. Ashton-Miller said. “If you can’t do a single push-up, it’s going to be difficult to resist that kind of loading on your wrists in a fall.”

And people who can’t do a push-up may not be able to help themselves up if they do fall.

“To get up, you’ve got to have upper-body strength,” said Peter M. McGinnis, professor of kinesiology at State University of New York College at Cortland who consults on pole-vaulting biomechanics for U.S.A. Track and Field, the national governing body for track.

Natural aging causes nerves to die off and muscles to weaken. People lose as much as 30 percent of their strength between 20 and 70. But regular exercise enlarges muscle fibers and can stave off the decline by increasing the strength of the muscle you have left.

Women are at a particular disadvantage because they start off with about 20 percent less muscle than men. Many women bend their knees to lower the amount of weight they must support. And while anybody can do a push-up, the exercise has typically been part of the male fitness culture. “It’s sort of a gender-specific symbol of vitality,” said R. Scott Kretchmar, a professor of exercise and sports science at Penn State. “I don’t see women saying: ‘I’m in good health. Watch me drop down and do some push-ups.’ ”

Based on national averages, a 40-year-old woman should be able to do 16 push-ups and a man the same age should be able to do 27. By the age of 60, those numbers drop to 17 for men and 6 for women. Those numbers are just slightly less than what is required of Army soldiers who are subjected to regular push-up tests.

If the floor-based push-up is too difficult, start by leaning against a countertop at a 45-degree angle and pressing up and down. Eventually move to stairs and then the floor.

Mr. LaLanne, who once set a world record by doing 1,000 push-ups in 23 minutes, still does push-ups as part of his daily workout. Now he balances his feet and each hand on three chairs.

“That way I can go way down, even lower than if I was on the floor,” he said. “That’s really tough.”

well@nytimes.com

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An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up - New York Times

Keeping Part of a Paragraph with the Next Block of Text in Word

http://wordtips.vitalnews.com/Pages/T000331_Keeping_Part_of_a_Paragraph_with_the_Next_Block_of_Text.html

Summary: If you are a WordPerfect user, you may be very familiar with the block-protect feature, and wonder if there is a similar tool in Word. There isn’t, but as this tip explains, there are ways you can work around what may appear to be a shortcoming in Word. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003.)

Holly is a long-time WordPerfect user who now finds herself needing to use Word for her job. When she used WordPerfect, she would often use WordPerfect's block-protect feature to keep the last part of a justified text paragraph with, say, a contract signature block. Since switching to Word, Holly has not been able to figure out how to accomplish the same thing.

The short answer is that there is no way to do this in Word. The reason has to do with fundamental ways in which formatting differ in Word and WordPerfect which are too long to go into here. (They have, however, been fully covered in other issues of WordTips.) There is, however, a workaround that you may be able to play with a bit to see if it will provide the desired results. Follow these general steps:

1. Make sure that Word is displaying non-printing characters. (Click the Show/Hide tool on the toolbar, or choose Tools | Options | View tab | All.)
2. At the point where you want the "block protect" to begin (perhaps at the beginning of the second-to-the-last line in the paragraph), insert a hard paragraph break. (Position the insertion point there, and then press Enter.) You should see the familiar backwards-P symbol indicate the location of the paragraph break.
3. Select the paragraph mark (the backwards-P symbol) and format it as hidden text. (Click Format | Font | Hidden.) If you have Word configured so that hidden characters are not displayed, then it may appear as if your paragraph mark disappears. If hidden characters are displayed, then a red dotted underline appears under the paragraph mark.
4. Position the insertion point in the paragraph after the paragraph mark, and format it so that it stays with the following paragraph. (Choose Format | Paragraph | Line and Page Breaks tab | Keep with Next.)

You may need to play with your character spacing a bit to get just the effect you want, but this workaround offers the best potential solution to what you are trying to do.

Another potential solution is more manual in nature, but it may just do the trick, particularly if you only periodically need to force the last two lines from a paragraph to the next page. Simply position the insertion point at the beginning of the second-to-last line of the paragraph and press the Left Arrow key one time. The insertion point should now be at the end of the preceding line. Hold down the Shift key as you press Enter. This inserts a line break into the paragraph. You can continue to hold down the Ctrl key as you repeatedly press Enter, until the two lines are on the new page.

If you use this approach, remember that when you enter these line breaks you are not starting a new paragraph. Word treats the entire paragraph (including the line breaks) as a single unit. This means that if you have the paragraph formatted as "Keep Lines Together" (on the Line and Page Breaks tab of the Paragraph dialog box), then inserting the line breaks may force the entire paragraph to the next page. Simply turn off the "Keep Lines Together" setting if you don't want the paragraph to behave in this manner.

Topics: Keeping Part of a Paragraph with the Next Block of Text

Automatic Rebates Save Money Eating Out

Stephanie Nelson, Couponmom.com

Although there are many coupons available for all kinds of restaurants ranging from fast food to formal restaurants, many people do not feel comfortable using a coupon at a restaurant.  They may feel awkward asking the server to accept the coupon, they may feel like a penny-pincher in a social situation, or they may feel ridiculous pulling out a coupon in front of a client.

Fortunately, there are some restaurant savings programs that allow you to save big dollars without presenting a coupon at all.  I call these "automatic rebate" programs and they can save time, money and embarrassment for diners who are not comfortable with coupons.

My favorite automatic restaurant savings program is Rewards Network at www.rewardsnetwork.com that gives members cash rebates ranging from 10 percent to 20 percent of their total bill.  The program costs $39 to join, but if you go to the Restaurant Coupons section at www.couponmom.com, you can take advantage of a free trial membership through a special link on that page.

Rewards Network is easy to use once you understand how it works.  First, go to www.rewardsnetwork.com and enter your zip code.  You will see a list of participating restaurants.  When you join the program you register a credit card.  When you eat at a participating restaurant, you will earn a cash rebate into your Rewards Network account automatically.

You do not need to explain the program to the server and no one else in your dining party needs to know you are saving money at all.  The rebate will appear automatically if you remember to use the registered card and you are also able to register more than one credit card.  The good news is that your rebate is based on your total spending, including beverages, tip and tax.  Many typical grocery coupons or gift certificates exclude the cost of beverages, tax and tip.

I have found the program to be very helpful when I am traveling on business, as well as family trips.  I can easily find restaurants that are near my hotel based on zip code.  The site also helps me decide where I'd like to eat because I can review each restaurant's menu online and read actual reviews from members who have eaten at the restaurant.  I've saved money by avoiding hitting any bad restaurants with the review and rating feature of the site.

Rewards Network gives members the option of receiving their rebates in the form of cash, airline miles or dollars in a Upromise college savings account.  If you opt for the cash program, there is the $39 membership fee I referenced earlier.  If you opt for airline miles or Upromise savings, you will not pay a membership fee at all.  However, the cash program offers higher rebate percentages than the other two options.  Your best bet is to use the free trial membership link at www.couponmom.com and earn higher cash rebates.

In some cases, you may be able to combine coupon savings with Rewards Network savings, depending on the individual restaurant's policy.  One of my favorite restaurants offers a 20 percent cash rebate through Rewards Network, and I am also able to print a "buy one, get one free" coupon from a local coupon website.  With savings like that, I am more than happy to pick up the check!

Automatic Rebates Save Money Eating Out - Smart Savings News Story - WPLG Miami

Memorex SimpleSave Backup DVDs

Memorex from Imation has something useful for folks who rely on digital cameras to preserve their upcoming summer memories - the Memorex SimpleSave Photo & Video Backup DVDs. This method offers an easy and hassle-free way to back up the images which are important to you, in addition to providing that extra peace of mind just in case a nasty PC crash happens. These DVDs are readily available, with the discs being record-once DVDs that feature pre-loaded software that is smart enough to find, organize and back up photo and video files on PCs and connected drives automatically. It is beginning to sound like magic, no? Since the software is auto launching, that eliminates the need to install any program, making SimpleSave a totally new way to back up content with almost no effort required.

Memorex SimpleSave Photo and Video Back-Up DVDs are an ideal solution for photography hobbyists, memory keepers, busy moms and anyone who owns a digital camera. In just one step, summer travelers can store an entire season of photographs on one DVD. Once inserted, the Memorex SimpleSave DVD automatically searches for photo and video files, and saves up to 2,000 photos on a single disc. For the happy snapper who took more photos this summer than a single disc can hold, the SimpleSave software will automatically alert them to how many discs are needed to back up all photo and video files. Advanced options also offer the choice to designate which file types should be located and saved, as Memorex SimpleSave discs recognize more than 40 different image and 50 video file formats.

Interested parties will be able to pick up the Memorex SimpleSave Photo & Video Back-Up DVDs are available in packs of five discs with slim storage cases for $14.99 a pack.

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Memorex SimpleSave Backup DVDs » Coolest Gadgets