freecreditreport.com

Let's see. There are what? 3? 4? of those freecreditreport.com commercials floating around the airwaves now.

Each one of them has a somewhat different annoying song.

Each one of them has a scenario where some guy doesn't quite have the perfect lifestyle because he didn't check with freecreditreport.com to be sure his identity hasn't been stolen, or his fiance has perfect credit, or can only get a broken-down used vehicle instead of the latest dream machine. The latest of these has some guy "going green", not because he was being environmentally conscious, but because the only thing he could afford with his credit was a bike.

Now I haven't quite decided if this series of commercials implies that men are really too stupid to make reasonable credit decisions, or men are the only ones concerned about how their credit is perceived, or that women are so smart about this that we don't have to market to them, or that women are too stupid to even begin to understand the concept of keeping track of one's credit rating.

The only time a woman gets mentioned is when the fiance neglects to mention a credit default, so they have to live with her folks instead of in a home of their own. Now, I'm not completely nuanced in this stuff, but, as I understand it, that's not particularly accurate.

In any case, I'm not planning on using their "free" service anytime in the near future, just on general principle. The reality is that men and women need to check this stuff out and keep some kind of track on it. The other reality is that there are truly free ways of checking with the credit report companies, without getting rooked into joining a "service" which does the same thing you can do yourself.

Now if I could just get those stupid jingles out of my head!