How to get information about an inquiry?

[islandsky]

One of my CRs states that I had an inquiry from a credit card company and I never applied for new credit with them because I already have an account.  What should I do?  Is there anything I can do to dispute this?  Would I be better off calling the company first and asking them about it, or should I dispute it with the EX?  It says it might be hurting my score and now I'm worried about why it's even there!...

Please help.

[llecs]

Did you request a CLI online or on the phone? Did you do a product change? A CLI often results in an inquiry.

Do NOT dispute it. That's the quickest was to a fraud alert and you could either lose the TL off the CR or the lender may close the account. I've seen both happen here.

IMO, inquiries are WAY overrated. I've got 20-30 on EQ and EX and they don't have much of an impact at all.

ETA: calling the OC doesn't hurt any.

Message Edited by llecs on 01-03-2009 07:17 PM

[iamrayl]

If you did not apply for credit, employment or a service from the creditor, my advice would be to contact them in writing of the potential fraudulent application that was placed with them and request that they contact the CRA to remove the inquiry.  I received an alert at the end of November regarding an inquiry that was made on my TU report from a credit card company.  I sent a letter to the CCC informing them that I never applied for any credit card or service from them and would like to know why an inquiry was placed on my CR.  They wrote me back acknowledging that the inquiry was indeed fraudulent, they would stop processing the application and they would be contacting TU to remove it and also advised me to follow up with TU in 30 days to make sure that it has been taken care of.  I pulled my free annual report at the end of 2008 and it appears that someone did use my name but a different address in another state to apply for a credit card (the address and telephone number that was used is listed on the report).  I know the general advice on these forums is not to dispute inquiries but if someone applied for credit using your name you should get that cleared up.  You don't want to be a victim of identity theft.  But as the other posted suggested, if you applied for a CLI or did a product change from the same creditor, then the inquiry is legit and you shouldn't dispute it.

[islandsky]

I'm not doing too bad right now considering my scores have definitely gone up over the last 6 months, so I guess it's not that big of a deal.  I will surely watch my report closely though and make sure nothing suspicious happens.  I haven't applied for CLI with them since the beginning of 2007.  It just makes me feel weird that it's on one CR but not the others.  I'll probably take your advice if it's not hurting me that much we'll see...I'm going to pay down all the debt and if my score goes up I'll ignore it but if it doesn't help I'll look into it.

Thanks.