How far has Ben Stein sunk? Far enough that I feel compelled to resuscitate the Ben Stein Watch, just to share this unfunny and positively harmful TV ad which is now being aired:
“I went to freescore.com and found out my score for free”, says Ben, while an annoying squirrel holds up a sign with the word “FREE” in some horrible brush-script font.
A few points are worth noting here. First, the score itself is not very useful to consumers. What’s useful is the report — if there’s an error on the report, then the consumer can try to rectify it. Secondly, and much more importantly, if you want a free credit report, there’s only one place to go: annualcreditreport.com. That’s the place where the big three credit-rating agencies will give you a genuinely free copy of your credit report once a year, as required by federal law.
You won’t be surprised to hear that freescore.com is not free: in order to get any information out of them at all, you have to authorize them to charge you a $29.95 monthly fee. They even extract a dollar out of you up front, just to make sure that money is there.
Stein, here, has become a predatory bait-and-switch merchant, dangling a “free” credit report in front of people so that he can sock them with a massive monthly fee for, essentially, doing nothing at all. Naturally, the people who take him up on this offer will be those who can least afford it.
The level to which Stein has now sunk is more than enough reason — as if the case for the prosecution weren’t damning enough already — for the NYT to cancel Stein’s contract forthwith. It’s simply unconscionable for a newspaper of record to employ as its “Everybody’s Business” columnist someone who is surely making a vast amount of money by luring the unsuspecting into overpaying for a financial product they should under no circumstances buy.
It’ll also be interesting to see whether the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency will have the authority to regulate this kind of advertising. If it doesn’t, that’s a significant hole in its mandate.
Update: Ryan Chittum notes that the new credit card act requires advertisers to inform consumers that the only place for a free credit report is AnnualCreditReport.com; they will also be required to include a statement that “This is not the free credit report provided for by Federal law.” When does this act come into force?
Update 2: It’s also worth quoting the NYT’s own ethics guidelines:
40. It is an inherent conflict for a journalist to perform public relations work, paid or unpaid.
44. Staff members may not engage in financial counseling (except through the articles they write). They may not manage money for others, offer investment advice, or help operate an investment company of any sort, with or without pay.
Stein isn’t a staff member. But the NYT generally holds its columnists to the same ethical standards.
Update 3: Here’s a good video, to go with Stein’s bad one.
Update 4: Freescore seems to be intimately connected with a very ugly company called Vertrue. Ugh.
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73 comments so far
really! Even Shaq wouldn’t do that one, and who imagine that he’d pass up a “free score?”
- Posted by bdbd“Free with enrollment in TripleAdvantage.”
Maybe this kind of garbage is something that may be covered by the new consumer finance commission. This is a financial product, and basically the advertisment is a lie. (like many ads)
- Posted by JonathanAh, Ben Stein. I remember fuming at his column in August 2007 that argued everyone was just overreacting to the subprime mortgage crisis: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/busine ss/yourmoney/12every.html
Every single point in that piece, of course, turned out to be wrong, but the best part is the kicker:
> This economy is extremely strong. Profits are superb. The world economy is exploding with growth. To be sure, terrible problems lurk in the future: a slow-motion dollar crisis, huge Medicare deficits and energy shortages. But for now, the sell-off seems extreme, not to say nutty.
> Some smart, brave people will make a fortune buying in these days, and then we’ll all wonder what the scare was about.
- Posted by Zach SewardGive the guy a break. He probably followed his own bulltard advice and lost everything. Doling out more horrific financial advice is the most obvious way to make it back.
- Posted by Adam SharpSquirrel does a good job, though. Hits its cues with those banners every time.
- Posted by ottoWhat do you mean “sunk”? How is this lower than the batch of dangerous lies in his movie Expelled?
- Posted by NeklosI saw Stein on a banner ad all day yesterday. I was surprised he would endorse one of these ripoff outfits (usually owned by one of the ratings agencies themselves, for double the badness.)
This sort of ripoff is what state Secretary of State’s or AGs should be pursuing.
- Posted by StavWell, as he wrote in one of his columns, he does have an unemployed adult son and daughter-in-law to support, so maybe he needs the money.
- Posted by MnemosyneI think it isn’t as dishonest as you make out; I took a look at it and it looks like freecreditreport.com, you can get the score for free, you get a 7 day free trial and if you do not cancel within 7 days you have to pay the (exorbitant) fee of $30 per month. It’s definitely set up as a trap for the unwary, but it isn’t a flat-out lie.
I like creditkarma, they do give you a free score (but no report) and now they give you a credit report card too, with some useful information like what your total debt is, utilization percentage, inquiries from the credit bureau the pull from, delinquencies and maybe other stuff as well, I forget.
http://www.annualcreditreport.com is actually not the only place to get reports. What you can do is, go to the bureau website and say you want to do a dispute. At least two of them have given me reports to so I could point out the items in dispute, without asking me to prove that I had been denied credit or what I was disputing.
- Posted by Mike Toreno[...] Felix Salmon: Ben Stein, predatory bait-and-switch merchant: How far has Ben Stein sunk? Far enough that I feel compelled to resuscitate the Ben Stein Watch, just to share this unfunny and positively harmful TV ad…. “I went to freescore.com and found out my score for free”, says Ben, while an annoying squirrel holds up a sign with the word “FREE” in some horrible brush-script font. [...]
- Posted by TheTradingReport » Blog Archive » New York Stein Crashed-and-Burned Watch (Financial News Edition)If Ben Stein isn’t enough piece of work check out this bit of insanity from the NYTs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/opinio n/16thu3.html
Specifically,
Congress should be dealing with the national embarrassment that individuals barred from airlines on the terrorist watch list are free to shop for firearms.
If that isn’t a big old cup of WTF I don’t know what is.
- Posted by Gibbon1Tangentially, could this mean the end of those stupid freecreditreport.com singer/songwriter ads? Because those things are like punishment for having ears, and the one about marrying a girl with bad credit makes me want to never love again.
- Posted by SaraBen Stein lost it when he endorsed “intelligent design” in his movie. He makes the disingenuous argument that “academic elites” ( i.e. knowledgable scientists) who don’t teach creationism ( as believed by one particular sect of one particular religion) alongside evolution science are stifling academic freedom.
He also shills for Raymond J Lucia, a financial planner.
- Posted by B PartridgeBen Stein is your ordinary financial news shill. He is also a perverted financial news shill.
Ben Stein: Hot To Fox Trot
Gives a whole new meaning to Free “SCORE”.
- Posted by News Corpse“http://www.annualcreditreport.com is actually not the only place to get reports.”
Legally, and for consumers not disputing an item, yes it is.
“What you can do is, go to the bureau website and say you want to do a dispute. At least two of them have given me reports to [sic] so I could point out the items in dispute, without asking me to prove that I had been denied credit or what I was disputing.”
So you admit to breaking the law and lying in order to get a free report, even though you can get one for free at annualcreditreport.com … ?
Um, okay.
As someone who has ghostwritten more than 40 articles and a book on personal finance, I can assure you that the annual report site is the best way to get your free report, and that a credit score is pretty much useless since all three bureaus use slightly different scoring models. (There’s also the fact that, right now, Experian won’t even give you a score — they’re in a lawsuit with Fair Issac over a new scoring system they tried to implement.)
IIRC, FreeCreditReport.stupid is ran by TransUnion and they’re making a fortune off those who don’t know any better.
Oh, and the “free” 7-day trial is not, in fact, free, and is damn near impossible to have stopped — my sister got rooked and it took a letter from a lawyer to get them to refund the money they stole from her.
- Posted by Mark D“Give the guy a break. He probably followed his own bulltard advice and lost everything.”
Now I have this mental image of Ben Stein as the guy playing guitar at a fast-food restaurant in one of those freecreditscam– er, freecreditreport.com commercials.
- Posted by Marcus[...] that former Nixon staffer and current annoying winger media personality Ben Stein would be, gasp, a “predatory bait-and-switch merchant”? Go read that before you believing anything he tells you on your [...]
- Posted by Midday Open Thread | Bloggers For Change[...] that former Nixon staffer and current annoying winger media personality Ben Stein would be, gasp, a “predatory bait-and-switch merchant”? Go read that before you believing anything he tells you on your [...]
- Posted by Midday Open Thread | RQDC[...] that former Nixon staffer and current annoying winger media personality Ben Stein would be, gasp, a “predatory bait-and-switch merchant”? Go read that before you believing anything he tells you on your [...]
- Posted by Midday Open Thread | News FuOh, for heaven’s sake. I do not lie. As a matter of fact, whenever you make a payment on a card, the report is in error because the balance is wrong, the creditor doesn’t send new information until the closing date, so you can dispute it to have it reflect the correct balance. This is particularly relevant when you have paid off a card with a big balance and don’t want to wait until the closing date for it to show up on the card.
annualcreditreport, while I like it a great deal, doesn’t work when you have already used up your free report for a bureau for that year and want another report from the same bureau.
As for them not canceling when they’re supposed to, I don’t know about the triple advantage thing Stein is hawking, but I have done freecreditreport a couple times and had no problem canceling.
annualcreditreport is less of a pain, though, and that, combined with creditkarma, should satisfy most people’s needs. The good thing about creditkarma is you can do it every day if you want.
- Posted by Mike Torenotip of the iceberg
- Posted by jesse kornbluthHere’s more of Stein’s wretched history
http://gawker.com/5006818/ben-stein-bad- advertisement-for-intelligent-design
[...] that former Nixon staffer and current annoying winger media personality Ben Stein would be, gasp, a “predatory bait-and-switch merchant”? Go read that before you believing anything he tells you on your [...]
- Posted by Midday Open Thread | Design WebsiteWhat? The creator of the anti-evolution propaganda film “Exposed” is willing to lie for money? Whoda thunkit?
- Posted by giantslorStein has been full of crap for years now. When he wrote a column saying social security was “going broke” (it is solvent until 2036), I e-mailed him and called him out on it. Of course, he never responded. Liar.
- Posted by John Smith[...] Felix Salmon discusses in his blog, Stein is shilling for a new website, freescore.com (also freescore.tv), that is [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein steals your money « flâneur de fraude[...] I used to like Ben Stein. I found him humorous and enjoyed his game show. Friends of mine would belittle him and I’d say, “Hey, we need all the funny Conservatives we can get.” It didn’t even bother me that he was a shameless Nixon apologist, that he doesn’t believe in evolution or that I once saw him be pretty darned rude to a sales clerk in a Good Guys electronics shop. Heck, I’d even overlook his track record as an alleged economics authority which, in the early days of the current crisis, consisted of an unbroken string of dead-wrong predictions. But — I know…you could smell the “but” coming — at some point, he seems to have decided that if he’s getting paid enough, he’ll do a commercial for anything. [...]
- Posted by Ben Steins Money « Info for Life![...] But — I know…you could smell the “but” coming — at some point, he seems to have decided that if he’s getting paid enough, he’ll do a commercial for anything. [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s Money | HyipLife.com[...] Stein selling ‘free’ credit reports for a dollar That’s right. Ben Stein is now hawking FREE credit reports for a dollar. Man, the interest just kills ya every time, doesn’t [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein selling ‘free’ credit reports for a dollar « Skepacabra[...] Felix Salmon calls Ben Stein a predator, or a shill for a predator…tomato, tomaato. (Reuters) [...]
- Posted by Breakfast Links: Ben Stein, Rock Radio & Intern Eating Contests « The Reformed Broker[...] 7/17/09: And speaking of Stein, this positively screams for a blogger ethics panel (h/t [...]
- Posted by Monday Mashup (7/13/09) « The Liberal Doomsayer[...] Ben Stein, predatory bait-and-switch merchant (blogs.reuters.com) [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar | PunditCountry[...] is no excuse for someone with his background to take money for pushing a switch and bait scam like this. On deck: We’ll see what the Times does in response. Hint to Pinch and Steve (because the [...]
- Posted by Here’s Your Sunday Boom Boom Pow! Out of My Mind for 19 July 2009 « Out Of My MindWell, I saw your “this is my last Stein post, anyone want to take up the Ben Stein Watch banner?” and did not take you up on it (despite my own blog getting lots of hits when I dished Stein), because I was as sick of the duffer as you were. But, yowser! Has anyone noticed how slurred and labored his voice has become? It sounds terrible - I’ve wondered about the possibility of a stroke for some time.
What a sad spiral for a man who I, frankly, see as a narcissist, first portraying himself as a playboy and hinting at an open marriage in (one of) his autobiograph(ies), hanging around pretty young things and reportedly chasing them on his game show, then doing a U-turn into buffoonish creationism and self-righteous moralizing, and finally this desperate dance for coins. The predictable fate of the hopelessly mediocre.
- Posted by Kristine“the score itself is not very useful to consumers”
- Posted by JasonYou should tell this to the banks when you are trying to get a mortgage
[...] advertisements, Stein shills for the group which claim to offer you a free credit score. As several blogs point [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein and Not-So-Free Credit Scores « The Bankruptcy Blog[...] Ben Stein, predatory bait-and-switch merchant [...]
- Posted by Free Credit Report » Blog Archive » Latest annual credit report com news – Answering Reader Questions on Credit Reports[...] blogosphere simmers while Ben Stein [...]
- Posted by The Credit Score Blog » FreeScore.com II (second contact attempt)[...] recently starred in a commercial for a credit reporting agency which has been accused of being a ripoff. He is most famous for his role as a high school teacher in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s [...]
- Posted by BEN STEIN IS “UNETHICAL” « The Sports Pig’s Blog[...] outrageous $30 per month to see the credit report behind the score. As Reuters blogger Felix Salmon pointed out, consumers can get a free online report under federal [...]
- Posted by Pitchman Ben Stein Gets Economist Ben Stein Fired at the New York Times « Skepfeeds-The Best Skeptical blogs of the day[...] outrageous $30 per month to see the credit report behind the score. As Reuters blogger Felix Salmon pointed out, consumers can get a free online report under federal [...]
- Posted by MySweetLife.Net » Blog Archive » Pitchman Ben Stein Gets Economist Ben Stein Fired at the <i>New York Times</i> [Conflicts Of Interest][...] outrageous $30 per month to see the credit report behind the score. As Reuters blogger Felix Salmon pointed out, consumers can get a free online report under federal [...]
- Posted by Pitchman Ben Stein Gets Economist Ben Stein Fired at the New York Times | Pop News Daily[...] think Felix Salmon said it best in his Reuters report: “Stein, here, has become a predatory bait-and-switch merchant, dangling a “free” [...]
- Posted by New York Times Fires Ben Stein Over Commercial Spots | ChattahBox News Blogyour bark is bigger than your bite and your research on the product is pretty thin, felix. what kind of blogger are you?
as an actual live customer, who pays for the product monthly and has found value, you clearly are on a witch hunt for ben stein. what did any of these people do to?
it’s bad enough there was a falling out over his decision to rep the product, but your misrepresentation of the offer requires a bit more due diligence.
i was able to test drive the product and actually, when i finally saw my reports and scores and incorrect data, i was able to fix it, easily. have you tried calling the credit bureaus for help, lately? didn’t think so.
you claim the score is of no value - but they gave me the scores, which the free annual site you pimped didn’t. they also monitored my credit at all the big bureaus, which i don’t think free annual does either. if the scores have no value, why do the likes of myFICO and the credit bureaus seemed to want to charge me extra for them?
there are tons of products out there - and if you’re going to say it’s a crackpot, why not hit the bureaus on this too? these are THEIR products. they offer them too through their own sites like - freecreditreport.com, truecredit.com, equifax.com - and through every bank known to man.
so do me a favor, stop kicking poor ben when he’s down. if it weren’t for him paving the way for celebrity-esque writers (read: bloggers, to you, youngin’), you wouldn’t have a job.
buck up, dude and learn to do your research better. sensationalism only makes you look weak & uneducated.
- Posted by nikkikBen Stein graduated from my high school in the early 60’s (he reportedly was a jerk in high school also) and now has agreed to be the MC of a big reunion celebrating the 75th anniversary of the school.
- Posted by Martha TeitelbaumI have written to the organizers and told them that he is a completely inappropriate person, but they are so enamored of his Hollywood status that they simply don’t understand why anyone would want him off the ticket.
Many of us are refusing to go to the reunion — we certainly don’t want to pay to sit in an audience while Stein holds forth.
[...] has finally been fired from the New York Times. And I couldn’t be happier. The reason was his appearance in commercials for (and on the homepage of) freescore.com, a sleazy company which exists only to [...]
- Posted by EconTech » NYT Finally Fires Ben Stein[...] the New York Times for violations of the paper’s ethics guidelines. He’s been hawking “free” credit reports via Free Score.com, the kind of company who’s idea of “free” is [...]
- Posted by Bueller? « It Only Hurts When I Think[...] outrageous $30 per month to see the credit report behind the score. As Reuters blogger Felix Salmon pointed out, consumers can get a free online report under federal [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein Expelled From NYT « No Time for Trivia[...] outrageous $30 per month to see the credit report behind the score. As Reuters blogger Felix Salmon pointed out, consumers can get a free online report under federal law. The Times’ issue, though, is that Stein [...]
- Posted by Pitchman Ben Stein Gets Economist Ben Stein Fired at the New York Times - Trackpads CommunityUnbelievable! With all the focus on conflicts of interest in government I would have missed this story completely. Fortunately, the public can rely upon the New York Times and initiatives such as this one to guard against any and all potential things fishy.
- Posted by el caminoWant to find something on Ben Stein? He claims to have been valedictorian of his class at Yale Law School. Well, if you search the web, you will not find anyone else who made the same claim. Now with all those high powered people at YLS, you would think that one of them would be touting his/her valedictorian credentials. You’d think that there would be a list somewhere of YLS valedictorians.
My guess is that Ben Stein made it up.
- Posted by Wally BalooFelix is a piss ant little boychild…..he might as well save himself some time and just write, Nah nah nah nah…..nah nah. Cuz thats all I am hearing!
- Posted by wenzyI whole heartily agree with wenzy, Felix is a piss ant and obviously very intimidated by Ben. Is it any surprise they canned Ben, a Conservative at the most liberal rag this side of the London Guardian. Ben will move on to greater things as the NYT dies a well deserved death. Besides I’ll bet Felix doesn’t like Ferris Bueller either.
- Posted by roger strandwow, so did you have a crush on Stein in high school and he turned you down? I’ve never seen an article written with so much baffling hostility about such a harmless person. I’d love to see the writer go on “Win Ben Steins Money” and see how far they could go up against Stein himself.
Secondly, most of the comments I’ve seen about Expelled lead me to believe that almost no one here has actually seen the film. Nowhere does the film argue that Creationism should be taught in schools. Intelligent Design doesn’t even argue that. The film’s argument is that any teacher or scientist that considers ID shouldn’t be fired. Science should be open to considering anything… thats how we learn. Nearly every scientific discovery in history seemed ridiculous to someone at one point or another.
Secondly, someone made it sound like ID and Creationism are one and the same. They are not. People of all religions believe in ID. There are even athiests that believe in ID. ID is simply the idea that maybe there was a “designer” behind the beginning of life.
- Posted by Ted[...] Stein was a columnist at the NY Times until he was fired a few weeks ago for appearing in misleading ads for freescore.com. He’s now gone to the American Spectator and said that the real reason is because he [...]
- Posted by » I’m not convinced, Ben Stein Terra Incognita[...] recap for those of you following along at home: Felix Salmon wrote about Ben Stein advertising for Freescore. I wrote a follow up using publicly available information [...]
- Posted by Goliath v. David « flâneur de fraude[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 25th Edition | 52loans.com Blogs[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 82th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 84th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 70th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 73th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 75th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 76th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 74th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 78th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 77th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 79th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 81th Edition[...] Stein’s paymasters Adaptive Marketing, the owners of freescore.com, aren’t just predatory bait-and-switch merchants. They’re also litigious [...]
- Posted by Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters – 80th Edition[...] those reasons, Reuters blogger Felix Salmon called Stein a “predatory bait-and-switch merchant” in July, and someone called “Flâneur de fraude” added to the claim in a blog post, [...]
- Posted by Freescore.com Sues Yahoo To Reveal Blogger’s Identity [Intimidation Tactics] | Gizmart Blog[...] those reasons, Reuters blogger Felix Salmon called Stein a “predatory bait-and-switch merchant” in July, and someone called “Flâneur de fraude” added to the claim in a blog post, [...]
- Posted by Freescore.com Sues Yahoo To Reveal Blogger’s Identity [Intimidation Tactics] | Unit1[...] those reasons, Reuters blogger Felix Salmon called Stein a “predatory bait-and-switch merchant” in July, and someone called “Flâneur de fraude” added to the claim in a blog post, [...]
- Posted by Freescore.com Sues Yahoo To Reveal Blogger’s Identity [Intimidation Tactics] | theoffertree.com[...] a public service, since ‘free credit reports’ is one of the biggest scams, here’s the real place to get your free credit reports (you can [...]
- Posted by Web sites to avoid « PetuniasThe article is unfortunately true. Freescore.com made $60 in authorized charges against my credit card. Avoid them at all costs.
What they are doing ought to be illegal but unfortunately is not. So, too, is Ben Stein’s activity in endorsing them.
- Posted by Brian