The FreeCreditReport.com Guy

So let’s face it: the first person that the general public associates with credit and credit reports at this point in history is the actor who stars in those frighteningly catchy commercials for FreeCreditReport.com.

And that means that the face of the international credit crisis hasn’t been an indicted American corporate executive but an actor from Montreal. That would be the FreeCreditReport.com guy.

Naturally, this whole being from Montreal thing means he’s Canadian. So even if you don’t know his name, trust me, any insecure Canadian you stop on the street can probably sing you the biography of Eric Violette.

The curly-haired troubadour sings about how his credit woes have cost him his car, his job, his girl, all packaged in neatly digestible three-chord tunes. And don’t act like you don’t know the tunes. We all know those tunes. How could you possibly not know those tunes after they’ve been drilled into your head for a long time?

Of course, the really funny thing – Violette himself might not know the tunes. He doesn’t actually sing those uber-catchy jingles. His French-Canadian accent forbids it. The songs are dubbed by a voice-over singer. 

The FTC and the company have gone to great lengths, including its own parody commercial, to point out that this company does not handle the free annual credit report guaranteed by the law. For the record, the official site to get your annual credit report is https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp.