Credit Report viewed Illegally

[Anonymous]

There is a loan company in my town that I have used in the past, which I refuse to do business with anymore. I paid off a loan with them over 6 months ago, have a zero balance with their office and was NEVER late on any payments to them.  I pulled my experian report today and noticed they did a hard inquiry on 11/19/2014 without my permission. I have not applied for new credit with them.  As I understand it, this violates my rights under the FCRA.  What should my next step be? I want to go straight to an attorney and make them pay me $1000, but figured I may get some good advice here. I'm pissed, this dropped my score over 15 points, right when I'm trying to clean it up. 

[RobertEG]

The legal issue is whether their inquiry had a permisible purpose under one or more of the purposes stated in FCRA 604.

The permissible purpose of reviewing an existing account of the consumer terminated once the loan was paid off.

They appear to have had no permssible purpose.  In preparation for any legal action, I would suggest that you request and obtain a copy of their stated permissible purpose provided to the CRA when they obtained your credit report.  You are entitled to that information under the provisions of FCRA 609(a)(1), and must submit proof of your identity along with the current processing fee, which is $11.00, to the CRA along with identification of the info you request.

[Anonymous]

To add, I just called and they said my credit app was signed in 2012 and this gives them permission to continue to pull my credit, for extension purposes. I understand this may be the case on soft pulls, but not hard pulls, which affect my score. I understand this can only be done by customer initiated requests. 

[Anonymous]

I just received a call from the manager of the place who said his staff was "absolutely wrong and it will be deleted right away".