There’s this baby-faced young man on TV. He has curly hair, big eyes and he’s singing about how if he’d only checked on his credit, he’d be so much better off. And, it’s done to a catchy tune with a good beat.

In one commercial, he’s wearing a pirate costume, along with his other band members, and they’re working in a chain-type restaurant. Another features them driving in a beat-up old compact car, singing along about credit. They pull up to a stop sign and a car with two goodlooking young women pulls up beside them, look at the young men in the cruddy car, then giggle when the young men’s car lurches as they try to take off at the same time as the women.

Alas, foiled again by poor credit. If only they’d checked on freecreditreport. com on their computer.

Now, what’s wrong with this picture?

First of all, freecreditreport. com is owned by one of the three major national credit reporting companies, Experian. The other two majors are Equifax and TransUnion. Secondly, after one free report on the website, they want you to subscribe to a $14.95 monthly service that alerts subscribers to important changes in their credit status.

What you don’t learn is that there is a governmentmandated website where any consumer can get free credit reports by law. The Federal Trade Commission, which monitors things affecting credit among many other things commercial, makes a pretty big deal about Experian’s involvement in generating income from free credit reporting and monitoring. However, the FTC stops short of criticism of credit monitoring services. This is a growing business with nearly $1 billion in sales.

Most people don’t need the service because, for most of us, credit status doesn’t change very fast nor very dramatically. If you watch your bills, paying them on time, then making checks on your credit status a few times a year is enough.You can do that without spending a dime since the FTC requires the credit bureaus to provide one free credit report per year for consumers. Monthly monitoring is probably overkill unless you’re an identity theft victim.

While most credit reporting firms sell credit monitoring, Experian is the biggest in the marketplace when it comes to the monthly monitoring, a lucrative field.

Some major credit card companies partner with Experian to sell privatelabel versions of the monitoring service directly to their customers and they share the fees with Experian.

Over the last five years, the FTC has collected more than $1 million from Experian to settle agency charges that it has misled consumers who may have been seeking their free credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com but instead wound up on the $14.95 per month freecreditreport. com.

Technology, more specifically the Internet, has essentially eliminated the local credit bureau business but the national appetite for buying and charging has, over the last two decades, expanded another aspect of the credit business, that of credit and debt counseling and management.

A check of the Yellow Pages in a small city near where I live revealed a dozen such firms engaged in various aspects of debt counseling and management. Add to that a half dozen law practices offering services dealing with bankruptcy.

There are a few organizations that offer free debt and credit counseling and others that help arrange a payoff program with which the debtor can live.

But, when you see this nice looking young man singing the woes of not knowing how bad his credit is, know that there are cost free ways of checking and monitoring your credit. And, in today’s economic situation, that’s priceless.

Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor publisher. He can be reached by email at wwebb@wildblue.net.