Can CA make hard inquiries on your Credit Report?

[Raiders1]

I was looking at my TU credit report because it has 4 regular inquiries while the other two just have one. I realized that two of them are Collection Agencies. Both inquiries are about a year old (two months apart from each other). But I don't have open accounts with either one. Can they do that? Should I dispute it with TU?

[pizzadude]

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@Raiders1 wrote:

I was looking at my TU credit report because it has 4 regular inquiries while the other two just have one. I realized that two of them are Collection Agencies. Both inquiries are about a year old (two months apart from each other). But I don't have open accounts with either one. Can they do that? Should I dispute it with TU?

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Yes, CAs have permissable purpose to pull your credit report, either a HP or SP, assuming that they are collecting on your debt.

[Raiders1]

The thing is that I've never had accounts with them, I've never even hear of them until I googled their names. It seems that they were maybe trying to buy my debt from another CA. I know some CA check your credit before buying the debt, but it's normally a soft pull. It doesn't matter too much because they should be off my report by the time I apply for a morgage next year. I'm trying to not have anymore inquiries and get rid of all my collections before then, and I'm afraid other CAs will pull my report and affect me in the mean time.

[pizzadude]

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@Raiders1 wrote:

The thing is that I've never had accounts with them, I've never even hear of them until I googled their names. It seems that they were maybe trying to buy my debt from another CA. I know some CA check your credit before buying the debt, but it's normally a soft pull. It doesn't matter too much because they should be off my report by the time I apply for a morgage next year. I'm trying to not have anymore inquiries and get rid of all my collections before then, and I'm afraid other CAs will pull my report and affect me in the mean time.

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Yes, they can pull your credit if they are buying or collecting your debt, either as a hard or soft pull.

[RobertEG]

Yes, a debt collector with specific collection authority has permissible purpose under FCRA 604(a)(3)(A).  However, I know of no permissible purpose for a potential debt collector who has not yet been assigned collection authority or purchased a debt to access a consumer's full credit report.

Based on an old FTC ruling, certain "header information," such as name, address, phone number, may be obtained without permissible purpose, as the FTC has stated that they dont consider that information to be account-specific, and thus not a pull of one's consumer report.  So they could get your name, address, phone number, and then possibly use that to investigate through other public records or databases.

However, if a debt collector has no collection authority on an account with the consumer, I dont believe they have a permissible purpose under FCRA 604(a)(3)(A) to receive the consumer's full credit report.

[ceejx]

If I were you I would opt out until you're ready to do your mortgage.. and then you can make an opt-out exception when it's time so your report can be pulled