I recently received an email from browningnotice@gardencitygroup.com with the subject Federal Court’s Notice of Proposed Class-Action Settlement. Please Read. It made it into my Inbox rather than my Spam folder. Reluctantly, I clicked on it and was pleasantly surprised to see that I can benefit from yet another class action lawsuit. This one stems from a couple of years ago when I checked my credit scores.

Highlights from the email:

You may be eligible to receive a benefit from a class-action settlement if you purchased and paid for a credit score or credit monitoring from ConsumerInfo.com or an Experian Entity between June 17, 1998 and December 27, 2006.

A federal court has directed that this notice be sent to inform you of a proposed class-action settlement. Records show that you entered into an agreement over the Internet with ConsumerInfo.com or an Experian Entity to purchase any Credit Check or Credit Check Monitoring (which were formerly known as CreditCheck® Monitoring Service), Credit Manager (including Yahoo! Credit Manager), Triple Alert, or Triple Advantage credit-monitoring product, or you paid for a credit score sold on a website that also sold one of these credit-monitoring products, between June 17, 1998 and December 27, 2006. If so, you may be eligible to receive a benefit under the proposed settlement.

The settlement will resolve a lawsuit over whether Defendants violated the federal Credit Repair Organizations Act or are liable for claims where the stated basis is about improvement of a consumer’s credit record, history, or rating. Under the settlement, Defendants deny that they are liable, but have agreed not to make certain statements on particular websites and to provide all Settlement Class Members with the opportunity to obtain their choice of a settlement benefit: either (i) a credit score or (ii) 60 days of credit monitoring, as described below and on the settlement website. To see if you are a Class Member and to obtain full notice of the proposed Settlement, the required procedures, the Effective Date, the deadlines, your obligations, and your options, you must visit www.browningsettlement.com. This email is only a brief summary of the full notice that is posted on the website.

I love how with these class action lawsuits, the defendants always “deny that they are liable,” but are willing to give away millions of dollars in services. Personally I’m going to opt for the free credit score rather than credit monitoring.

Also interesting is the fact that if you go to http://www.browningsettlement.com./registration.php3 to register is show the actual lawsuit as Browning v. Yahoo!, Inc. I remember finding this offer on the front page of Yahoo!, so that must be the reason.

Technorati Tags: Experian, credit score, credit monitoring

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