With all the reports of hard inquiries without PP, I find myself wondering if creditors and CRAs have been lax over the years (because of a lack of report reviews on the part of consumers) in choosing to seek (and allow) hard inquiries when they should have been soft (if at all.) However, it does seem pretty obvious that CAs should not have PP ... without having to go to court to get a ruling on that.
Until the masses had access to their 'annual free credit report' most of us would have never known who (or how often) anyone was pulling our reports. DH and I did not seek new credit for about 15 years and never had a reason to pull our credit reports to see who was looking over our shoulder. Having never been denied for credit, we were never entitled to a "free report" until recently, so we had no clue who was "spying" on us. By the time we saw our reports, any unacceptable inquiries would have fallen off.
This new freedom we have to scrutinize our reports has made us aware of things that have been going on for so long, the participating parties probably assume that since no one has been rocking the boat (up until now) their standard procedures are acceptable. CAs may have access to some of the information in our credit reports that would assist them with skip-tracing, but maybe their operations aren't sophisticated enough to be aware of what they legally can ask for and receive. Then again ... maybe they are all just mean-spirited and intentionally attempting to cause more problems for the consumer.
I also wonder if some of the hard inquiries are because of software programming on the part of those creditors pulling the reports. Maybe the individuals who initiate an inquiry are using software that doesn't give them an option of what type of inquiry to request, hence the number of hard inquiries that should be soft?
Just grasping at straws here and trying to give the front-line customer service people a break when they say the inquiry will be soft (or not pulled at all) without knowing what the back-office procedures really are. We have become a nation of "gate-keepers" and front-line Customer Service doesn't really always have all the answers. One of the more difficult things I have had to try to get through to my kids is that the first person they talk to doesn't always have the right answers and they have to push to go higher up the chain to get to someone who really does know (or can find out.)
March on brave warriors (to places no man has gone before!)