topic Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the?? in General Credit Topics

Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

vollybal — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:11:03 GMT

So We are moving cross country and setting up everything for the move date when I get an alert that Comcast has Hard Pulled my credit...What is up with that...I never heard them running hard pulls before and I have had all different cable service providers before and they never pulled my credit other than a soft pull. Man I wish they did not as I am trying to keep inquiries down as in Oct. The last major badly in falling off the CR and Then I will be going after prime...Ok enough ranting. have a good day!!

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

webhopper — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:16:51 GMT

If you did not authorize it, I would totally call comcast and see if they can remove it from reporting to the bureaus.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

tcbofade — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:17:46 GMT

I think that times are changing...

Last December, we transfered our cell service from my wifes name to my name...same provider...ATT...hard pull.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

mxp114 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:29:38 GMT

Pretty much everyone hard pulls these days, cable, mobile, car rental companies, etc. Even HSN, ShopNBC will HP if you use their payment options for a large purchase. So now I have all three frozen, which requires them to gain my consent for a HP. Just freeze them, best thing I ever did.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

llecs — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:38:18 GMT

Ditto. If you open a checking acct, a savings account, a brokerage account, join a CU, get cable, get a new cell, get a security service like ADT, get a new phone number, get satellite TV, do business with certain utilities, and many others, expect a HP.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

pizzadude — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:47:52 GMT

Yep, most Cable providers will do a credit check before allowing you to have service, and they will usually inform you when you sign up that they will be pulling your credit.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

Creditaddict — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:53:19 GMT

Time Warner HP me last year after I was told it was soft... I have talked to Executive office before stating there is nothing they need to see that they can't get from a soft pull... They now offer Automatic Billing to a credit card if you would like to avoid the HP... I'm hoping the work being put in by Suze Orman and others to get the scoring modeling of Fico Changed will include INQ... I don't believe they should be part of ANY scoring...

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

spengbab — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:05:31 GMT

When I switched to Verizon, Verizon performed a hard pull to my credit. I can understand for phone service, but cable?

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

MarcinXP — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:34:01 GMT

Cable companies are definitely doing HPs now. Since the world of Triple Play services along with advanced equipment like HD and DVRs they want to know what you credit looks like...ask if you can avoid a HP with Comcast...I was told that if I did not want to have my credit checked that I need to pay a deposit which is refundable after a year of good service or when I disconnect. Also if your score is not good enough they want to get a deposit as well..so its Prepay or HP..seems logical as I read somewhere that utlities and cellphone companies writeoffs are through the roof.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

Creditaddict — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:59:36 GMT

@MarcinXP wrote:
Cable companies are definitely doing HPs now. Since the world of Triple Play services along with advanced equipment like HD and DVRs they want to know what you credit looks like...ask if you can avoid a HP with Comcast...I was told that if I did not want to have my credit checked that I need to pay a deposit which is refundable after a year of good service or when I disconnect. Also if your score is not good enough they want to get a deposit as well..so its Prepay or HP..seems logical as I read somewhere that utlities and cellphone companies writeoffs are through the roof.

You possibly can get me to feel bad about the huge writeoffs if it was cable because like me cable right now I have Signature Service which is whole home DVR x2 and another box and the highest interenet which gets it's own new box and phone, also another box and if they gave me just 3 months before cutting service off and then also didn't get equipment back it would be in the $800ish for service and who knows boxes... but stil I feel that can all be done with a soft.

Phone I know people don't pay all the time but unless it happens in like 2 months, I just don't htink they are loosing money....

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:53:46 GMT

Thing is, with cell cervice, you could go over your minutes, call international, or do a lot of other things to run up a huge bill that you would owe. Checking credit makes more sense there.

Cable is billed in advance. You only have service you have already paid for. Cable companies are not really extending credit in any way. They don't need to be doing a credit check. Comcast didn't check mine a year ago when I signed up for internet.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:54:54 GMT

Keep in mind your Cable Company gives you a credit limit for purchasing VoD (Video on Demand/PPV). It is possible to order over $200 or more of content per month including thinks like boxing fights/movies/...

Just one of the DVRs can cost as much as $500.

I've heard with some cable companies you can have frozen credit, but they need a copy of photo ID for verification and they call the phone number listed on the freeze.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:50:13 GMT

Yet another reason for cutting the cord.

So many choices now for content that you can effectively cut the cable and not miss one hell of a lot. Sure there are some things, out of town sports and such, but for the money saved every month it just got to be too hard for me to justify.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:48:27 GMT

Mmm Hmmm, Tell me about it. It's more than cable, any body can do it if it's in the contract you sign, or verbally agree to. I got so frustrated with this type of activities I froze my credit reports.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

boomhower — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:34:33 GMT

I can understand it with the technology in place these days. HD boxes, DVR's, modem's, modem's w/phone, etc are all expensive pieces of equipment. Could they do it with a soft, yep. I don't know why so many utilities are hell bent on hard pulls.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

BGinVA — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:36:39 GMT

Yeap, Dish Network, hp'd me last fall when I switched over from Directv (changed only so I could get local news stations we couldn't get with Dircetv). Thing that ticked me off, is they told me some crap about checking with the previous service provider to see if I was paid up to date (which I was) so I said "sure", and it wasn't until a few weeks later when I checked My FICO that I realized they didn't check anything with Directv, they hard pulled my credit report.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

HiLine — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 20:34:05 GMT

@BGinVA wrote:
Yeap, Dish Network, hp'd me last fall when I switched over from Directv (changed only so I could get local news stations we couldn't get with Dircetv). Thing that ticked me off, is they told me some crap about checking with the previous service provider to see if I was paid up to date (which I was) so I said "sure", and it wasn't until a few weeks later when I checked My FICO that I realized they didn't check anything with Directv, they hard pulled my credit report.

Dang! Just realized I got a pull from Comcast as well. I didn't even sign up for their service - I don't remember what I did back then. Does an inquiry from Comcast matter to lenders? They understand this doesn't imply credit seeking don't they?

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

RobertEG — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 21:34:50 GMT

While credit report inquiries are frustrating, FICO recognizes the very short term value of their ability to predict payment risk, and discontinues their scoring after one year.

While the CRA policy is to retain them for up to two years, thus making them viewable to others, I would suspect that others also assume that an inquiry of over a year prior is of little concern. So impacts are usually not so serious as to result in serious hair-pulling.

As for coding, it is unfortunate that a party will report hard when promising soft, but very difficult to contest if they do.

So-called hard and soft inquiries are administrative conconctions of the CRAs, and are not regulated under the FCRA except for promotional offers for credit that were not initiated by the consumer. Disputes over inquiries of any nature must show actual lack of permissible purpose, and are not disputable under the FCRA based on coding.

And all disputes relating to inquiries in any form are specifically excluded from the direct dispute process, so must be made through the party that granted the inquiry...the CRA. Tough one to crack, if the party provided a permissible purpose.

As for permissible purpose, it need not be based on extension of credit. FCRA 604 grants, as permissible purpose without prior consumer consent, pull of your credit report as long as they have a "legitimate business purpose" associated with a consumer-initiated business transaction.

Re: Comcast Hard Pull!! What the??

Anonymous — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 21:53:35 GMT

Thread revival lol. In PR my experience has been that they HP for most cable services or request a hefty deposit if you don't want credit to be verified. The same for cell phones, HP if you want a discounted device.

For Internet (dsl) I didn't got HP, I recently requested cable as well and they didn't HP (though it is a 12 month contract or pay $100 deposit for the DVR). For cell phone service I bought my own device (old school tonka nokia that never breaks xD) and subscribed to a month to month plan, no HP even though I pay 1 month after service is used <- probably did a SP as they requested SSN.

I agree with HP if you want a discounted/free device, but if all you want is service then it does more harm than good (IMO). Sad thing is that most companies penalize the prepay subscribers with higher costs for the same service on top of the cost for the device.