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Today I received a notice alerting me someone pulled my credit report as a hard inquiry. I called the number listed and I talked got transferred to their collections dept. They told me they pulled it because they were "investigating their old accounts and they pulled mine to see if this was on my credit report". They told me the account was last active in 2001 (15 yrs ago). I was not aware of this account having a balance charged off, I never received a call or notification, and it is not showing on my credit report. I feel as though they don't have the right to pull my report.
*let me add, in my state (michigan) the statute of limitation is 6yrs.
The FCRA defines certain "permissilbe purposes" for which a party does not need any express consent from the consumer to pull thier credit report.
Those permissible purposes are defined in FCRA 604.
Express authorization is only required if the party does not have one or more of the stated permissible purposes.
If express consumer permissible were required for all inquiries, then normal business and credit transactions would come to a crawl.
A party to whom you owe a debt has a permissible purpose under section 604 to review the account.
A debt collector has permissible purpose under section 604 provided they have current collection authority to pursue collection on the debt, either via assignment from another, or their current ownership of the debt. A charge-off does not negate the debt or prevent continued efforts to collect on the debt.
The exclusion periods under FCRA 605(a) apply to preventing a CRA from continuing to include adverse items of information in a normal credit report they issue after expiration of the exclusion period. They do not bar permissible pulls of a consumer's credit report.
Thank RobertEG. Its not the information I wanted to hear, but it sounds like they're not prohibited from pulling my report so long as there is still a balance owed... if theres truly a balance because thats still in question too.