Reasons why to stick to ordering credit reports direct with the CRA 1. Monitoring service may be a good deal on cost if accessing often. But the CRA does offer free reports in special circumstances. 2. Monitoring service helps monitor for ID Theft, but they can't process disputes or activate a fraud alert - only the CRA can do that. 3. Monitoring service reports are less detailed, they sometimes miss address information to contact creditors or collection agencies. Sometimes they are missing expiration date to know when negative item is due to fall of report. 4. CRA reports contain a file number & phone number to access customer service if needed, the CRA web sites don't have the dispute numbers, that is only contained on the credit report. And you can't just lift a number and think that you can use it again later, from time to time the CRA will change the number.
And just to add to what you were saying, for disputing purposes the actual credit reports from Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union provide full data fields. Dispute those specific fields and any that are blank. The monitoring services usually don't have all the data fields as mentioned above.
