Today I sued Trans Union LLC in Small Claims Court for showing 3 hard inquiries by collectors, NCO, Plaza and Zwicker.
However, I'm starting to suspect that Transunion treats collector inquiries differently from the other bureaus, Experian and Equifax.
The same collectors i sued for hard inquiries on Transunion, placed soft inquiries with the others, all of them, and they are swearing that they never wanted to do hard inquiries in the first place (yeah, easy to say now that you are in front of a judge).
However, I think they are onto something because of some other little things i noticed.
On my paper Transunion report, the collector inquiries are sitting in a separate box from Credit\Insurance inquiries and from Account review inquiries. They are visible and in a special Collector section.
MyFico, Chase ID Protection and TrueCredit, they all mention that my credit score is low because of the "collection inquiries". Never seen anything like that on the Experian or Equifax reports.
Next week I'll subpoena Transunion to provide any documentation regarding permissibility of these inquiries and to support the investigations they should have done upon request (I asked them 3 times to give me proof of permissibility). My tactic here is to force them to state they do not assess permissibility - the collector can simply check a box on e-Oscar where it says it has purpose, but Transunion doesn't verify - not even after a complaint.
The case will be heard at the end of December.
Starting Score: 454