Well, first of all, that's a pretty dang scary way to get a report. I'm pretty perturbed to know that a contractor can access my credit files! And I believe that several contactors just lost their jobs with the passport office for doing something similar.
Anyway, your BF needs to go to annualcreditreport.com and request all three (EQ, TU, and EX) of his reports for free. If he's already done this within the past 12 months, he should go to each company's website and pay about $8-10 at each and buy his own report. Tell him to be sure not to pay for any scores when he does this. Only EQ (Equifax) will sell his FICO score from the credit bureau website. The others sell bogus FAKO scores.
If a report shows both hard and soft inquiries, they are separated out on the report. The soft inquiries will be under a separate heading that will say something like "requests for credit viewable only by you." These are partial credit reviews that are done by existing creditors to make sure that you're behaving yourself, and seeing if they want to increase your credit limit, and also reviews by other companies to see if you fit their overall profile of potential customers. If you have pulled your own credit reports, you will also see that here. None of these affect your score or your credit in any way, shape, or form. Many of us here on the forums follow our softs to see who is interested in us, even though these don't affect our scores.
Hard inquiries, which result from you asking for credit, display for two years, although they are only counted in scoring for one year. These are the ones to inspect to see if they are legit. And when you get a credit report from someone other than the actual credit bureau, for instance from myFICO, TrueCredit, PrivacyMatters, etc., they will only display the hards. (And myFICO will only display hards from the last 12 months, because they are the only ones that affect scoring.)
All three reports (from the three credit bureaus) will show completely different lists of inquiries, because most creditors only pull a report from one credit bureau. So for example, my EQ has inqs from PenFed, Citi, and Chase; TU has an inq from Barclay's; and EX (Experian) has inqs from Kohl's/Chase (over a year old), Bank of America, and American Express. And I would be mortified to tell you how many softs I have on each from all the credit pulls that I did myself!
edit to add: well, I took so long to post this that the thread evolved. I see now that you understand the difference; it's just his family freaking out from not knowing how this stuff works. I hope you can explain it to them; otherwise, it just looks like one of those times when a grown-up's relatives just need to mind their own business.
Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 03-22-2008 07:40 AM
Anyway, your BF needs to go to annualcreditreport.com and request all three (EQ, TU, and EX) of his reports for free. If he's already done this within the past 12 months, he should go to each company's website and pay about $8-10 at each and buy his own report. Tell him to be sure not to pay for any scores when he does this. Only EQ (Equifax) will sell his FICO score from the credit bureau website. The others sell bogus FAKO scores.
If a report shows both hard and soft inquiries, they are separated out on the report. The soft inquiries will be under a separate heading that will say something like "requests for credit viewable only by you." These are partial credit reviews that are done by existing creditors to make sure that you're behaving yourself, and seeing if they want to increase your credit limit, and also reviews by other companies to see if you fit their overall profile of potential customers. If you have pulled your own credit reports, you will also see that here. None of these affect your score or your credit in any way, shape, or form. Many of us here on the forums follow our softs to see who is interested in us, even though these don't affect our scores.
Hard inquiries, which result from you asking for credit, display for two years, although they are only counted in scoring for one year. These are the ones to inspect to see if they are legit. And when you get a credit report from someone other than the actual credit bureau, for instance from myFICO, TrueCredit, PrivacyMatters, etc., they will only display the hards. (And myFICO will only display hards from the last 12 months, because they are the only ones that affect scoring.)
All three reports (from the three credit bureaus) will show completely different lists of inquiries, because most creditors only pull a report from one credit bureau. So for example, my EQ has inqs from PenFed, Citi, and Chase; TU has an inq from Barclay's; and EX (Experian) has inqs from Kohl's/Chase (over a year old), Bank of America, and American Express. And I would be mortified to tell you how many softs I have on each from all the credit pulls that I did myself!
edit to add: well, I took so long to post this that the thread evolved. I see now that you understand the difference; it's just his family freaking out from not knowing how this stuff works. I hope you can explain it to them; otherwise, it just looks like one of those times when a grown-up's relatives just need to mind their own business.
Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 03-22-2008 07:40 AM
