FreeCreditReport.com Has 11,046 Customer Complaints

Legal Note — I make no claims or assertions about FreeCreditReport.com, other than sharing this data relating to their BBB record (which is public record). The data reported in this article was taken from this page on January 7, 2010.

FreeCreditReport.com has racked up more than 11,000 Better Business Bureau complaints over the last 36 months. I stumbled across this a couple of days ago and found it to be quite impressive. I screen the BBB records of companies all the time, but I’ve never seen such numbers as these.

This is the website you see on TV all the time. If you watch television, you’ve seen their commercial. It’s the one where the three scruffy guys dress up like pirates and sing catchy little tunes about free credit reports. The website is owned and operated by Experian, one of the three credit-reporting companies in the United States.

Here’s a snapshot of their Better Business Bureau complaint table, as of January 7, 2010:

In case you’re wondering, here is how the complaint-rate breaks down on a monthly and daily basis. This is based on 11,046 complaints filed over a 36-month period, which is what the BBB reports. I rounded down to the nearest tenth of a point:

• 306.8 complaints every month
• 10.2 complaints every day

This means that every day, on average, ten people are angry enough to stop what they are doing, visit the BBB website, and fill out a complaint form against the FreeCreditReport.com website. I don’t know how many total customers they have every day, but that’s a pretty impressive rate of complaints.

Can any other company beat these numbers?

I’m curious to know if there are other companies with a larger number of Better Business Bureau complaints. I checked a few companies I thought might be up there, but so far none have equaled this impressive feat. I’m sure they’re out there, though. So here’s my question to all of you:

Does anyone know of a company that has “earned” more than 11,000 complaints in a 36-month period? I’m just curious.