CIC Credit Monitor Service ripoff Orange County California

About a year ago(4/02)I requested a credit report from www.consumerinfo.com regarding a tenant who had applied for rental of a home from me. The site address was given to me by a real estate broker and I was told that it was fully free to the requester. The web site was full of advertisements of their free credit report offers and I had just to fill in the blanks of their on line form. I entered the tenants name and his now old address on the first page.

I also had to fill in my e-mail address. To go to the 2nd page I had to click on only 2 possible selections but both forced me to state that I wanted a trial membership ( of what membership ?). Not clicking on one of these selections would not bring me to page 2!!
I did so to get to page 2 where I had to fill in all my credit card information, my mothers maiden name, Soc. sec. number, phone number, etc. Then I clicked on the submit button, but also realized that there was a $ 79.95 charge for being a member of their creditcheck monitoring service.

The site responded that not enough information had been given and therefore could not process the request. They also wanted the name of my bank, bank account number(s) to be entered on page 3. At this stage, I realized that the merchant requested too much information, and I terminated the credit report request without filling out page 3. I was not interested in any membership.

I have never received any credit reports of the prospective tenant or of myself or any other service from the merchant.

I am afraid that the merchant, with all my personal information available to him, will create a bad credit mark with the 3 major credit rating companies.

Francoise
Mountain View, California
U.S.A.