Experian is a pile of dark pattern garbage
Many years ago I froze my credit with all three credit reporting agencies in the US. This was a fairly straightforward process that differed slightly at each agency, but mostly involved getting a numeric PIN that I then used to request temporary unfreezes from time to time.
In February of 2023 I attempted to request an unfreeze from Experian, but the process had changed. They wanted me to create some kind of account to manage my credit freeze, using an email and password. This seemed harmless enough, since I think at least one other agency was requiring something similar at that point, so I started the process.
But by the end, I had somehow signed up for a "free" membership called "Experian Creditworksâ„ Basic: Free." I tried a lot of workarounds, but as best I can tell there is no way to avoid creating this account in order to manage a credit freeze online with Experian.
Of course after gaining access to my new account, and browsing the dashboard, there was no obvious way to actually manage a credit freeze. But naturally there were a number of ways for Experian to upsell me various products and services of dubious quality.
For instance, in the "Protection" section of the dashboard, where you might expect to find credit freeze management features, there is instead a link to something called "Experian CreditLock." This is a materially identical service to the credit freeze service which they are required by law to offer free of charge, except the CreditLock service costs money.
In order to actually manage a credit freeze, you have to scroll past the upsell call-to-action to find a small text link:
This is barely discoverable to me, someone who has built web application software professionally. I can't imagine how my mom would avoid the upsell trap. She'd almost certainly end up paying for Experian's CreditLock service at some point. Knowing this makes it harder for me to recommend that she freeze her credit, which is really maddening.
Technically this does qualify as a free credit freeze service though, which is something. But I am now getting multiple Experian marketing emails each week, masquerading as "account-related" transactional messages.
In that most recent email titled "Andrew, you have 1 new credit alert to review," the following text appears at the bottom:
Why am I receiving this email? This is not a marketing email—you’re receiving this message to notify you of a recent change to your account. If you’ve unsubscribed from Experian CreditWorks℠Basic emails in the past, don’t worry—you no longer receive newsletters or special offers. You can update some alerts and communications preferences any time on your Experian CreditWorks℠Basic profile, but you’ll continue to receive notifications like this one on the status of your account.
But of course just above that text there's this link enticing me to "Gain access" to some nice-sounding stuff:
And when I click to "Gain access" I am taken immediately to this page asking me to pay for an account upgrade:
If this doesn't qualify as marketing, then marketing has lost all meaning.
I don't want to give up on the idea of accountability for dark pattern abusers like Experian, but I'm not sure how to proceed. Maybe there's a complaint I can file with the FTC/FCC. In any case I've now made myself feel a little better by ranting about Experian on the internet.
Thanks for reading and sharing my outrage.