You can hardly turn on your TV these days and not see them, the commercials for freecreditreport.com.  But there's a catch to the catchy company.  The idea is simple, if you want to avoid the pain of bad credit, you'll go to their web site and order your free credit report.

"Checking your credit report is probably the number one consumer tip that we give."

Privacy expert Beth Givens says everyone should check their credit report every year, but she says freecreditreport.com is not the way to do it.

"Given the name, Free Credit Report, wouldn't you think that it's free. That's their web site name, that's what they advertise on TV incessantly. It's extraordinarily deceptive."

"Well, I didn't think I'd get charged by the commercials but I ended up getting that monthly service fee," said Phil Higgins.

Phil Higgins found out the hard way when he ordered his credit card report through freecreditreport.com and immediately started getting charged 14 dollars and ninety five cents on his credit card for a monitoring service.

"You get your free credit report and then the next thing you know you see the charge on your bank statement and you have to call them and go through the whole ordeal of canceling the membership."

Now there is a web site where you can get a free credit report, it's not freecreditreport.com, it's annualcreditreport.com.  It offers one free credit report from each of the three credit bureaus with no monthly fees.  Something Phil wishes he'd known about.

Freecreditreport.com  told the New York Times that you do get a free credit report and score and they feel they've been up front and fair, giving consumers the opportunity to become aware and comfortable with the credit reporting concept.