Credit Verify is a credit monitoring and identity theft protection service in Canada. It is powered by TransUnion.
The last few years have been rife with several major data breaches resulting in the exposure of personal credit, social insurance numbers, bank accounts, and other identifying information for millions of people in North America.
Two recent examples are the Equifax and Capital One data breaches, and there are several others.
These incidents have led to an increase in the demand for credit monitoring and anti-identity theft services.
Update: This review of Credit Verify is for informational purposes only. Based on reader feedback about this service, I do not recommend signing up. You can check out other options, including credit monitoring services provided directly by TransUnion and Equifax.
Credit Monitoring and Identity Theft Protection Canada
Credit monitoring can help you keep track of your credit score and reports, alert you to potentially fraudulent activity, and help you restore your credit if you become a victim.
Canadians have two main options for monitoring their credit.
Option 1
The credit bureaus, Equifax and TransUnion, are obliged to provide you with one free copy of your credit report every year upon request. You can review this free credit report for any errors or suspicious entries.
In addition to reviewing your report, you can also obtain your check your credit score for free and use both to manually gauge if someone has stolen and is utilizing your credit profile.
Option 2
You can automate the credit monitoring process by signing up for a service that provides daily monitoring of your credit file (24 hours a day and seven days a week).
It will cost you a monthly fee; however, you can rest easy knowing that you will be notified if bad actors steal your information and try to use it for fraudulent purposes.
Who is Credit Verify?
Credit Verify offers credit reports, credit scores, and credit monitoring services in all provinces except Quebec. They are owned by Credique LLC, a company based out of California, U.S.
In addition to its base offering, Credit Verify provides resources that help its customers improve their credit scores, a real-time credit score simulator, and access to credit cards, loans, debt assistance, and rewards.
How It Works
To sign up for this credit monitoring service, you must be the age of the majority in your province, i.e. at least 18-19 years old.
Following the 7-day trial period, a $19.95 subscription fee is charged every month if you choose to continue.
What Do You Get?
A Credit Verify subscription gets you the following benefits:
- A daily credit monitoring service that puts you in the driver’s seat. This service is powered by the credit bureau, TransUnion
- Unlimited access to your credit report and score
- Alerts when there are changes to your report
- Debt and credit analysis resources
- Real-time credit score simulator
Is Credit Monitoring Worth It?
Monitoring your credit for breaches or fraudulent activity is important. Whether you do it manually by requesting your free credit report and score on a routine basis or opt for an automated 24/7 service, it is crucial that you remain on guard at all times.
The sooner you realize you have been compromised, the easier it is to limit any potential damage.
If you are not aware that your identity has been breached, a hacker or scammer can go ahead to create financial accounts in your name, open bank accounts, apply for a credit card, or purchase a vehicle.
Does credit monitoring guarantee you will not be defrauded?
No, it does not necessarily stop someone from trying to defraud or impersonate you.
What it does is alert you so you can take steps right away to prevent or limit the damage. For example, you can ask credit bureaus to freeze your credit (U.S.). In Canada, you can place a Potential Fraud Alert on your consumer credit file.
Conclusion
Credit monitoring services offer a service that provides additional protection against fraud and unauthorized changes or credit inquiries to your credit file. If you want the extra peace of mind that comes from automating your credit monitoring, you can give them a try.
Make sure to read online reviews and ratings, as other customers have voiced complaints about Credit Verify and the difficulties with cancelling your subscription.
Related:
- 10 Steps For Getting Out of Credit Card Debt
- Best and Free Cash Back Apps in Canada
- Personal Loans for Bad Credit Canada
- Best Personal Loan Options in Canada
- How To Get Your TransUnion Credit Score
Credit Verify Review: Credit Monitoring in Canada
Overall
Summary
Are credit monitoring and identity theft protection services in Canada worth it? This Credit Verify review covers their daily credit monitoring service offering and how to protect yourself from identity fraud.
Pros
- Regular credit score updates
Cons
- Can check your credit score for free using other services
- Poor customer support
Credit verify is crap. Try cancelling their service and you will know the meaning of patience. Terrible company!
Credit Verify is a shaddy ‘so called’ monitoring service based in California. It is NOT a Canadian company. (1)Their rates, for starters are in USD, not CDN (so expect to see $1.50 and $35 billed on your statement, not $1 and $19.95). (2) their customer line 1-866-899-3175 puts you on hold for hours (3) most telling is that their FAQ pages emphases at length why they don’t do refunds. Avoid this business.
Don’t give these people your information. They say a 7 day trial basis, but as soon as you give them your information they keep charging you.it is impossible to get ahold of them to cancel. Website said cancel by phone or email but they dont answer the phone and say you cannot cancel by email COMPLETE RUN AROUND. I found fraud happening on my bank account and they did alert me on any of it. these people should be reported
I agree with the almost impossible way of canceling the service after the first “free” week. Anybody have any suggestions as to how to stop it?
Have you had any luck canceling? I’m dealing with the same crap, I just emailed to see if that works
Was able to evetually cancel by phone. Best to call early in AM, Pacific Time.
They cancelled it in my case..Made multiple calls to confirm cancellation because they said technical difficulty to send confirmation email.Still they charged from account after.So beware of this phishing
A total fraud for sure. I went another route with them, i changed my Access card and password.Fingers crossed.
I canceled my card immediately. Omg was i pissed off.. ive been calling every place I can to report them and charge them with fraud and get consumer reports involved.. cr
Scam!!!! Once they steal your money you wont be able to get ahold of anyone. Just a machine on repeate.
Do not trust them they do a crap deals to take amount of 36 dollars ,donot deal or even make any activation to thier face book ,they will charge you 36 and refund if you call before 7 days and to sheet and confuse you take a 1,5 dollar and pending 36 if you would like to continue, but you should cancel 2days at least before ,donot deal with then Equifax are much respectable
Same thing happened to me, I am upset about this Service.
THIS COMPANY IS A SCAM.
I HAVE NO CLUE HOW THEY GOT TO MY ACCOUNT INFO AND STARTED BILLING ME. I NEVER ENROLLED BUT ONE MORNING, I SEE A WITHDRAWAL OF $$ FROM MY ACCOUNT. MY EFFORTS TO CALL AND CANCEL IS FUTILE, I CALL THE STATED NUMBER AND IT NEVER ANSWERED. AN AUTO RECORDING SAYS TO GO TO FAQ AND FAQ SAYS TO CALL.
I think this article should be retracted. This is a known problematic company perhaps bordering on an actual scam. The use of affiliate links as well puts your credibility at risk. It’s a disservice to send new (or any!) Canadians to this site.
Under NO circumstances would I recommend this service to anyone. THIS IS NOT A CANADIAN COMPANY!!! Their website is misleading and the process they have to acquire your credit report insists that they need a credit card to confirm your identity. Despite indicating no charges will be made to your card, an immediate $1.38CDN appeared on my statement, followed by another $34.87CDN a few days later for a subscription that I never requested. To add insult to injury, I never did receive a copy of my credit report, and the ‘Dashboard’ they had for my account showed no information whatsoever. Trying to cancel by phone was a frustrating exercise, the agent constantly tried to upsell using a script. The agent finally stopped talking, cancelled my account, and sent me a confirmation email (while I was on line) only due to the fact that I was about to report them on the Government of Canada consumer website. BE WARE OF DOING ANY BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY.
Scam, zero stars. Will be reporting this company to both Visa and Consumer Complaints Canada.
Alert scam they even steal your credit # and charge as they like.Never heard of this company but they know you and stole your credit information and charge you. Beware
Wish I had read these reviews before I got scammed!! I cancelled my subscription before the 7 day trial period with a promise that there would be no additional charges, checked my bank statement and they charged me 34.95 which is 10.00 higher than the original quote IF I had stayed as a customer. This company has jaded me on ever dealing with any company online ever again.Very shady that you can only deal with issues over phone in certain time zone and get zero response via email. Will see how my next phone conversation goes.
Such a disgusting company roping in people looking to understand their credit and then charging their credit card monthly for services they never used.
Terrible customer support claiming to be management and refusing to do anything to reimburse lost fees for services never used.
I don’t even understand how companies like this are not accountable for effective support and proof of actually services provided.
Like all others in the comments, I have no idea how this company got my information and I will be reporting them to the Government of Canada and US Gov as a fraudulent company. Have spoken to Daisy and Jenny who claim to be supervisors multiple times to cancel my service and have still not gotten a confirmation email, not to mention was charged once still after speaking to them.
Currently on hold again hoping to get a confirmation email to support my claim and so that I feel somewhat better knowing that they SHOULD NOT but probably will charge me again at the end of next month.
BEWARE AND REPORT
this has happened to me and i am now trying to cancel my account. will phone but have also sent email.
how do i contact government of canada to report this fraudulent company
a charge in my checking account suddenly appeared ($19.95) on the 23rd of every month and i have finally found out who threy are.
thanks for all your honest comments. i hope you will be able to resolve this also.
A bad experience with non professional and misleading agents, cost me at the end 40$, ended up with no credit report which was the reason I signed up for what supposed to be a 1$ charge service. After several calls and speaking to many agents asking to fix the issue of not receiving a user name and temporary password while signing up even though I received confirmation, but 2 deductions from my credit card of more than the amount promised. Yet with all these deductions still did not get a credit report in return. This lead me to cancel my account which they recommended I do and to get a refund since they can not be fixed as they After I had done that I still didn’t receive the money, so I called again to ask why my money wasn’t refunded as promised? I was told by the new agent that the agent who canceled my account was terminated from the agency due to the false statements she was giving to the guests. However, even though these mistakes we’re on their end and I did not ask to be given fake information instead of still receiving compensation for the lack of professionalism through a refund, I still did not get one. Now even with no refund they still didn’t give me the credit report I payed for instead of the refund. So all I was left with was a useless sorry and a 40$ loss for this inconvenience. And of course no credit report.
My wife & I were on the transunion website trying to verify our personal information that they have on us. Somehow we must have unknowingly ended up on the creditverify website. Next thing we know we are getting billed on our credit card for a monthly credit monitoring service that we did not sign up for. By the time we got the first unauthorized billing on our credit card a second billing had already been posted. We called Credit Verify to get our money back. At first they offered $7 but after we told them that we were going to dispute the billing with our credit card company they offered to refund the second billing charge but only if we did not dispute the first charge. We refused this blackmail & they then refused to refund the second billing. They did agree to cancel our “subscription” but we don’t trust them so we decided to also cancel our credit card to be safe. We will proceed to dispute the charges with our credit card company. Why would anyone pay about $40 Cdn. per month to monitor your credit? I think VISA, Mastercard & American Express etc. should refuse their business.
I have a similar experience and I am now trying to cancel my subscription
Anyone know how I can report them or make them unable to take my money from my cart ?
These people are just scammers and thieves. I am a disabled senior andI have sent numerous emails and my bank has sent contact to stop them from taking money from my account. They don’t comply or listen. BEWARE! DON’T GIVE THEM ANY INFORMATION. STAY OFF THEIR WEBSITE.
Arnaque, Même chose je cherche à annuler et ils prennent 2 paiements sur ma carte de crédits le 15 de chaque mois, un paiement de 35$ et un de 18$ pour vérifier mon crédits, annuler toute inscription
@Stephanie: Cela semble être un problème populaire!