http://www.blueblood.net/2008/10/ice-cube/ Counterculture Lifestyle Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:11:05 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://www.blueblood.net/2008/10/ice-cube/comment-page-1/#comment-551 Blue Blood Magazine Gothic Punk Deathrock Fandom News Photos Forum » Do you know what Experian, Free Credit Report, Thirsty, Hot Topic and SuicideGirls have in common? Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:54:20 +0000 http://www.blueblood.net/2008/10/ice-cube/#comment-551 [...] From Halcyon’s comments on my NWA article, I think he may have thought that my objection to FreeCreditReport.com was solely that Experian as a larger company has done some sucky things. Most of you probably know that Experian is a credit reporting bureau. I found FreeCreditReport.com’s youth market targeted commercials really offensive. I felt that their commercials came across like Experian’s marketing department was sitting around laughing about how their version of a permanent record can totally ruin people’s lives. The commercials strongly implied that maybe hipster loser types should be demanding credit reports from their dates and housemates, just in case any of them had bad credit which might be an inconvenience down the road, whether the black marks on their credit were accurate or identity theft or whatever. There even seemed to be an undertone of implication that, if your friends and lovers didn’t feel like handing over their credit reports to drinking buddies, it might be smart to secretly enter info on people you know into FreeCreditReport.com. (I believe this would be a felony, as it should be.) Experian seemed to be congratulating themselves on connecting with the youth market via calling them both hip and losers. The value proposition put forth in their commercials is that you should use a service Experian provides so you can see how much false data Experian is keeping on file which might ruin your life. Every American is legally entitled to at least one free credit report a year, so I thought it was borderline extortionist for Experian to try to pry extra data from consumers, via FreeCreditReport.com, to give them the same free credit report information they would be legally entitled to without having to provide quite so much personal information. [...] [...] From Halcyon’s comments on my NWA article, I think he may have thought that my objection to FreeCreditReport.com was solely that Experian as a larger company has done some sucky things. Most of you probably know that Experian is a credit reporting bureau. I found FreeCreditReport.com’s youth market targeted commercials really offensive. I felt that their commercials came across like Experian’s marketing department was sitting around laughing about how their version of a permanent record can totally ruin people’s lives. The commercials strongly implied that maybe hipster loser types should be demanding credit reports from their dates and housemates, just in case any of them had bad credit which might be an inconvenience down the road, whether the black marks on their credit were accurate or identity theft or whatever. There even seemed to be an undertone of implication that, if your friends and lovers didn’t feel like handing over their credit reports to drinking buddies, it might be smart to secretly enter info on people you know into FreeCreditReport.com. (I believe this would be a felony, as it should be.) Experian seemed to be congratulating themselves on connecting with the youth market via calling them both hip and losers. The value proposition put forth in their commercials is that you should use a service Experian provides so you can see how much false data Experian is keeping on file which might ruin your life. Every American is legally entitled to at least one free credit report a year, so I thought it was borderline extortionist for Experian to try to pry extra data from consumers, via FreeCreditReport.com, to give them the same free credit report information they would be legally entitled to without having to provide quite so much personal information. [...]

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