Hard inquiry for a collection, no other info on CR

[-Cain-]

Hello all, I just pulled my TU and noticed a hard inquiry from over a year ago for a collection, but it does not reference an account nor is there another tradeline for it anywhere else. It is older, so not too sure what it is, but I have no clue what it may be from. The collection agency is in Canada, which makes it even weirder. Should I leave it alone and just monitor it to see if it happens again or do I contact TU and see if they'll give me more info. Thanks in advance!

[LIGHTNIN]

Inquiries reports for 2yrs and from what I hear only hurt for 1 year.

So since this is over 1yr old and is probably not hurting your CS I would just watch it.

[Anonymous]

All the experts 'round these parts say that a hard inquiry stops hurting your FICO score after a year. So if it's the score ding you're worried about, you can ignore it by now.

In my experience -- those weird inquiries can sometimes be the warning sign of something on the horizon. I had a few inexplicable inq's like that that morphed into full-on collections entries popping up on my report for stuff that had slipped through the cracks five or six years ago.

You might just want to find out who the company is and who they work for, even if you don't contact them directly. Figure out if you have any forgotten unpaid balances floating around in your past, and maybe try to get in touch with the OC before it turns into a collections situation.

My 2 cents!

[-Cain-]

Thank you both for the replies.

I'm not concerned about the score ding, it's not listed as anything hurting my score. It's more just that I don't know what it's for. Aside from current accounts started 2-3 years ago, I haven't had anything else on my credit reports since probably 8-9 years before then and I believe those were dealt with. I know who the company is, I don't know who they are collecting for and do not have records from that long ago. I will continue to monitor.