Weird situation. Should I dispute or not?

[Anonymous]

Hi all! I have an issue, on my credit report, I've been debating about for the past few months, and recently found this forum, so please give me some advice. Back in the fall I had an item put into collections and I paid it off. The collection account never appeared on any of the three bureau's reports, but the collection agency put four inquieries on my TU. Two were soft inquiries so that doesn't bother me,  but the other two were hard inquiries and that's what I don't understand. Any time that they accessed my report, shouldn't it had only been soft inquiries, being that I never gave them permission, in any way, to run a credit check on me? 

I know that inquiries can only be disputed in possible fraud cases, but I think that I have a valid argument here. Since inquiries can't be disputed online, I've thought of calling TU about this, but I feel that if I do that it could possibly do more harm than good and this is where I need advice. What I'm afraid of happening is if TU investigates and the collection agency adds the collection account to my report. Is that possible? Can they go back and add something after its done and over with? If so, I guess it would just be better to keep my mouth shut and just wait two years for the inquiries to drop off, as they definitely don't hurt me as much as a collection account, on an otherwise clean report, would. Should I risk getting them removed or is it just not worth it?

[pizzadude]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi all! I have an issue, on my credit report, I've been debating about for the past few months, and recently found this forum, so please give me some advice. Back in the fall I had an item put into collections and I paid it off. The collection account never appeared on any of the three bureau's reports, but the collection agency put four inquiries on my TU. Two were soft inquiries so that doesn't bother me,  but the other two were hard inquiries and that's what I don't understand. Any time that they accessed my report, shouldn't it had only been soft inquiries, being that I never gave them permission, in any way, to run a credit check on me? 

I know that inquiries can only be disputed in possible fraud cases, but I think that I have a valid argument here. Since inquiries can't be disputed online, I've thought of calling TU about this, but I feel that if I do that it could possibly do more harm than good and this is where I need advice. What I'm afraid of happening is if TU investigates and the collection agency adds the collection account to my report. Is that possible? Can they go back and add something after its done and over with? If so, I guess it would just be better to keep my mouth shut and just wait two years for the inquiries to drop off, as they definitely don't hurt me as much as a collection account, on an otherwise clean report, would. Should I risk getting them removed or is it just not worth it?

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I would leave it alone.   The inquiries will only affect your FICO score for 1 year, and given that there are only 2 hard inquiries it is likely not a huge ding to your FICO score.    You are fortunate that the CA didn't report the collection ~ that would result in a huge hit to your FICO score.   

Unfortunately CAs have permissible purpose to pull your credit, either hard pulls or soft pulls.   It's strange that they pulled it 4 times, but I would just advise that you leave it alone and in a few more months the inquiries won't affect your score anymore, and you won't run the risk of the CA deciding to add the collection to your reports.

[RobertEG]

+1

Debt collectors have permissible pupose under FCRA 604(a)(3)(A), so the inquiries were justified.  The FCRA places no limitation upon the number or frequency of inquiries. 

[traveler2005]

why are they allowed to do an inquiry when the account that they are trying to collect for is way past the SOL. I think this is just punishment. I think they ought change the rules a bit and only be able to pull a CR on debt that is legally collectable. Pulling one report after another artifically suppresses our scores, not allowing us to climb out of the bad credit hole.

[RobertEG]

Debts that are outside of SOL are still subject to efforts to collect.  Expiration of SOL does not negate the debt..... it means that your legal obligation to pay has expired, and thus they cannot obtain a legal judgment for payment.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the responses, everybody! Since CAs can get away with doing as many hard pulls as they want, I'm glad I decided to ask questions before calling TU. It would've sucked if in trying to gain probably only several points, by having the inquiries removed, I ended up losing a very significant amount, if they put the collection on the report. Guess I better just be thankful that, for whatever reason, the collection, itself, was never posted. Still don't get why they would continously pull my credit after I was already making payments (automatically out of my checking on a set date so never late) to them, though. Oh well...