Bank of America Privacy Assist Premier or True Credit?

[CreditDrama85]

which is a better monitoring service? why? major differences between the 2?

[MojaveMoon]

Something to consider.

The fine print in terms and conditions reveals who is actually running the BoA Privacy Assist Premier service. It's a company based in Chantilly, Virginia called Intersections (link). They offer this and apparently pretty similar services through other banks and businesses like Bank of America, Capital One, Citibank, Costco, Discover Card, and WaMu. I think it's even still sold with the computer software called ZoneAlarm.

Where I'm going with this is that I would think that Intersections' monitoring services that're being offered through each of these companies would probably be pretty identical. So maybe it'd be worthwhile to compare prices. If you're a Costco member, you can get a discount on the Intersections' credit monitoring service (link)

Here's what someone said recently about the service purchased through Costco:
"I've been using for about two years now, and I've been happy with it. I guess it all depends on what you're looking for. I use it to monitor my credit reports for suspicious activity and the routine errors that always seem to pop up now and then, so I only want to pull monthly reports. It comes with a service to warn you of large changes in credit card balances and monthly FAKO scores. Their FAKO scores have been pretty close to my true FICO scores on the months where I've compared them, but I wouldn't rely on them to make decisions on applying for a new loan or anything.

The service also has an identity theft tool kit, credit report error corrections took kit with sample letters, etc. to help you get started."


There are two things that bug me about the company:
- to receive the credit monitoring service, I assume that you have to provide Intersections your social security number. It's bad enough how many places ask for it, and now here's one more 3rd party company that you'd be handing it to.

- My previous experience with them awhile ago left a permanent bad impression on me.

I had their service through Capital One (myidalert.com and mycreditinform.com). They were charging me ~ $ 15 per quarter for a quarterly update of my Equifax credit file information and a FAKO credit score. As I started to wisen up, I found out that for that same amount of money I could've been ordering a credit report directly from Equifax along with a FICO score. Then, when I called to cancel, the agent tried to convince me that ordering a copy of my own report results in a hard inquiry and that I should stay with this credit monitoring service to ensure that I'd only have soft inquiries.

Message Edited by MojaveMoon on 03-02-2009 01:33 AM

[MojaveMoon]

For these credit monitoring services, sometimes like in the case of this BofA service the terms and conditions come right out and say that it's Intersections running the program. Other times like in the case of the Capital One service you have to look for the indirect clue ... if you see Chantilly, Virginia mentioned, then it's a good bet that it's Intersections running the service (for example: link).

And that's another thing that bugs me. In the case of their product that they offer for Capital One customers, why doesn't Intersections come right out and disclose the name of their company so you know ahead of time just who's in charge of your personal information that you submit when you sign up for the service ? That doesn't sit well with me.

As for TrueCredit, the fine print in the terms and conditions sometimes say that this is a product offered by TransUnion. But it appears that the company running TrueCredit (sometimes also called "TrueLink" or "TransUnion Interactive" ) is a subsidiary of TransUnion and that in the event that TrueCredit is sold that your personal information will be in the hands of some other company. That part bugs me, too.
TrueCredit corporate:
http://www.truecreditcorporate.com/about.html

Message Edited by MojaveMoon on 03-02-2009 01:50 AM

[MojaveMoon]

Personally, I think the lesser of two evils is having my personal information especially SSN in the hands of a credit bureau/credit bureau-owned company (TrueCredit/TransUnion) rather than Intersections.

Message Edited by MojaveMoon on 03-02-2009 01:43 AM

[Anonymous]

Is it true that everytime you purchase a copy of your cr from the cb's it is a hard hit on inquiries? Not including your anual free cr.

[Junejer]

No. Whenever you obtain your own CR, there is a soft INQ, not a hard INQ.

[Anonymous]

I had their service through Capital One (myidalert.com and mycreditinform.com). They were charging me ~ $ 15 per quarter for a quarterly update of my Equifax credit file information and a FAKO credit score. As I started to wisen up, I found out that for that same amount of money I could've been ordering a credit report directly from Equifax along with a FICO score. Then, when I called to cancel, the agent tried to convince me that ordering a copy of my own report results in a hard inquiry and that I should stay with this credit monitoring service to ensure that I'd only have soft inquiries.

This above is what was in the original post from mojavemoon. The last two sentences sates that BoA told her that if she cancel her service with them and pulled her own CR's that it would be a hard hit. I didn't thin that was true-so I was just making sure. I know I have pulled mine befroe and never got a hard inquiry. So BoA just told a bold face lie-which is not the first lie they have told and probably not the last lie that they will ever tell.

Thanks for clearing this up. I was affraid that some people would believe it to be true.

Edit:  The quote credited to Mojavemoon was duplicated twice.  Just cleaned it up.

Message Edited by ByrdMan on 03-03-2009 12:42 PM

[Junejer]

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cbjn1103 wrote:

I had their service through Capital One (myidalert.com and mycreditinform.com). They were charging me ~ $ 15 per quarter for a quarterly update of my Equifax credit file information and a FAKO credit score. As I started to wisen up, I found out that for that same amount of money I could've been ordering a credit report directly from Equifax along with a FICO score. Then, when I called to cancel, the agent tried to convince me that ordering a copy of my own report results in a hard inquiry and that I should stay with this credit monitoring service to ensure that I'd only have soft inquiries.

This above is what was in the original post from mojavemoon. The last two sentences sates that BoA told her that if she cancel her service with them and pulled her own CR's that it would be a hard hit. I didn't thin that was true-so I was just making sure. I know I have pulled mine befroe and never got a hard inquiry. So BoA just told a bold face lie-which is not the first lie they have told and probably not the last lie that they will ever tell.

Thanks for clearing this up. I was affraid that some people would believe it to be true.

Edit:  The quote credited to Mojavemoon was duplicated twice.  Just cleaned it up.

Message Edited by ByrdMan on 03-03-2009 12:42 PM

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Yes, BoA made a bald-faced lie. It was a rep doing whatever they thought that they needed to do in order to keep a client, no matter how unethical. **rolls eyes at BoA