Terms of Use
FEBRUARY 7, 2020
By accessing or using our Services, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of these Terms of Use (this “Agreement”) and our Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”). The terms “we,” “us,” or “our” mean Bankrate, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, whose principal office is located at 1645 Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, Suite 1200 West Palm Beach, Florida 33401-2214, and its affiliated companies. The term “Services,” means, collectively, various websites, applications, widgets, email notifications and other mediums, or portions of such mediums, through which you have accessed this Agreement.
This Agreement contains a binding arbitration agreement, which provides that you and we agree to resolve certain disputes through binding individual arbitration and give up any right to have those disputes decided by a judge or a jury. See the Legal Disputes section of this Agreement.
Your Compliance with this Agreement
Our Services are Not Intended for Minors
Your Access and Use of our Services
Bankrate Service
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- The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows you to obtain a disclosure from every credit reporting agency of the nature and substance of all information in your file at the time of the request. Full disclosure of information in your file at TransUnion® must be obtained directly from TransUnion by logging on to https://www.transunion.com/personal-credit/customer-support/faqs/credit-reports-and-disclosures.page#freeAnnualReport. The credit report you are requesting from us is not intended to constitute the disclosure of TransUnion information required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act or similar state laws.
- You are entitled to receive a disclosure directly from each of the consumer reporting agencies free of charge under the following circumstances:
- You have been denied credit, insurance or employment within the past sixty (60) days as a result of your credit report;
- You certify in writing that you are unemployed and intend to apply for employment in the 60-day period beginning on the date on which you made the certification;
- You are a recipient of public welfare assistance;
- You have reason to believe that your file at the agency contains inaccurate information due to fraud;
- Annually at www.annualcreditreport.com.
- Otherwise, the consumer reporting agency may impose a reasonable charge for the disclosure.
- The Fair Credit Reporting Act permits you to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your credit file. You understand that accurate information cannot be changed.
- You do not have to use the Services to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your TransUnion file or to receive a copy of your TransUnion consumer credit report.
- TransUnion provides a proprietary consumer disclosure that is different from the consumer credit report provided through Bankrate. The disclosure report must be obtained directly from TransUnion. Consumers residing in the States of Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, and Vermont may receive a free copy of their consumer credit report once per year and residents of the State of Georgia may receive two copies per year.
- By creating an account, you are providing written instructions to Bankrate, LLC under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to obtain information from your personal credit profile from TransUnion. You authorize Bankrate, LLC to obtain such information to confirm your identity and if you are a member of this website, provide you with credit information, a credit score, educational materials, and offers and recommendations for credit or other service options. If at any time you desire to terminate this authorization you may do so with no further obligations. Enrollment in this service is completely free.
- You have a right to dispute inaccurate information in your credit report by contacting the credit bureau directly. However, neither you nor any “credit repair” company or credit repair organization has the right to have accurate, current, and verifiable information removed from your credit report. The credit bureau must remove accurate, negative information from your report only if it is over 7 years old. Bankruptcy information can be reported for 10 years.
- You have a right to obtain a copy of your credit report from a credit bureau. You may be charged a reasonable fee. There is no fee, however, if you have been turned down for credit, employment, insurance, or a rental dwelling because of information in your credit report within the preceding 60 days. The credit bureau must provide someone to help you interpret the information in your credit file. You are entitled to receive a free copy of your credit report if you are unemployed and intend to apply for employment in the next 60 days, if you are a recipient of public welfare assistance, or if you have reason to believe that there is inaccurate information in your credit report due to fraud.
- You have a right to sue a credit repair organization that violates the Credit Repair Organization Act. This law prohibits deceptive practices by credit repair organizations.
- You have the right to cancel your contract with any credit repair organization for any reason within 3 business days from the date you signed it.
- Credit bureaus are required to follow reasonable procedures to ensure that the information they report is accurate. However, mistakes may occur.
- You may, on your own, notify a credit bureau in writing that you dispute the accuracy of information in your credit file. The credit bureau must then reinvestigate and modify or remove inaccurate or incomplete information. The credit bureau may not charge any fee for this service. Any pertinent information and copies of all documents you have
- If the credit bureau’s reinvestigation does not resolve the dispute to your satisfaction, you may send a brief statement to the credit bureau, to be kept in your file, explaining why you think the record is inaccurate. The credit bureau must include a summary of your statement about disputed information with any report it issues about you.
CardMatch Terms (Terms of Use)
- Bankrate.com may communicate the personal identifying information you have provided to one or more participating credit card issuers and to a consumer reporting agency.
- Bankrate.com may use your consumer credit report information, including your credit score, for internal business purposes, such as improving the website experience and to market other products and services to you. Bankrate.com may share this information with participating credit card issuers so they can determine if you may be eligible for certain offers.
- Credit card issuers that receive your personal identifying information from Bankrate.com may use it to pull a new credit profile to determine which card offers might be available to you, including checking for any prequalified offers.
- You understand that certain credit card issuers that receive your personal identifying information from Bankrate.com may use it to first determine if there are any previously matched credit card offers available to you without pulling a new credit profile, and if no offers are available, you authorize those credit card issuers to pull a new credit profile to determine which credit card offers might be available to you, including prequalified offers.
- The consumer reporting agency that receives your personal identifying information from Bankrate.com may use your consumer report information, including your credit score, to determine which credit card offers might be available to you based on credit criteria made available to the consumer reporting agency by participating credit card issuers.
- Bankrate.com is not a credit card issuer and does not issue credit cards, loans, or make credit decisions.
- Even if you choose to apply for one of your CardMatch offers, there is no guarantee that you will be approved by the issuer.
- When your personal identifying information is provided by Bankrate.com to a consumer reporting agency or a credit card issuer, you understand that your consumer report records will indicate that Bankrate, LLC and/or the credit card issuer has made a credit inquiry about you.
- Many, but not all credit card issuers participate in the CardMatch service, which may not include every product offered. You understand that Bankrate.com will determine, in its sole discretion, when, how often, and with which credit card issuer partners it checks for CardMatch offers based on criteria from each credit card issuer, availability of information needed to identify CardMatch offers, and other relevant factors.
- Bankrate.com will not be able to tell you why you did or did not appear to match to any particular credit card or other offer.
- This is not an application for credit and that, if you wish to apply for a product, you will need to click through to complete and submit an application directly with that issuer.
- If you decide to proceed with a provider’s application process on their website, that provider may conduct a hard pull, which may affect your credit score.
Public Forums
Transmissions, Submissions and Postings to our Services
- Information that infringes our or any third party’s copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other proprietary rights;
- Information that violates any law, statute, ordinance or regulation;
- Information that is trade libelous, unlawfully threatening, unlawfully harassing, defamatory, obscene, explicit or vulgar, or otherwise injurious to us or third parties or that infringes on our or any third party’s rights of publicity or privacy;
- Information that contains any viruses, worms, Trojan horses, trap doors, back doors, easter eggs, time bombs, cancelbots or other code or computer programming routines that contain contaminating or destructive properties or that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information;
- Information containing or constituting chain letters, mass mailings, political campaigning, or any form of “spam”;
- Information that is false, inaccurate or misleading;
- Commercial advertisements or solicitations without our written permission; or
- Federally trademarked and/or copyrighted information without our prior written permission.
Our Intellectual Property Rights
Your Use of the Content
Access and Interference
Electronic Communications
Your Responsibility for Equipment and Related Costs
Third Party Links or Access
Mobile Devices
Copyright Infringement
- A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner (“Complaining Party”) of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed;
- Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single Notification, a representative list of such works at that site;
- Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material;
- Information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact the Complaining Party, such as an address, telephone number, and if available, an electronic mail address at which the Complaining Party may be contacted;
- A statement that the Complaining Party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
- A statement that the information in the Notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the Complaining Party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
- We will remove or disable access to the material that is alleged to be infringing;
- We will forward the Notification to the alleged infringer (“Subscriber”); and
- We will take reasonable steps to promptly notify the Subscriber that we have removed or disabled access to the material.
- A physical or electronic signature of the Subscriber;
- Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled;
- A statement under penalty of perjury that the Subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled; and
- The Subscriber’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the Subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the Subscriber’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which we may be found, and that the Subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided the Counter Notification or an agent of such person
- We will promptly provide the Complaining Party with a copy of the Counter Notification;
- We will inform the Complaining Party that we will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to the removed material within ten (10) business days; and
- We will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to the removed material not less than ten (10), nor more than fourteen (14) business days following receipt of the Counter Notification, provided our designated agent has not received notice from the Complaining Party that an action has been filed seeking a court order to restrain the Subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the removed material on our network or system.