Does anyone know how banks or credit card companies know when you are eligible for their cards? I noticed everytime when my scores get higher, companies seem to offer up and send me special offers. Do they have access to my credit score or credit report? I'm wondering... 
@Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know how banks or credit card companies know when you are eligible for their cards? I noticed everytime when my scores get higher, companies seem to offer up and send me special offers. Do they have access to my credit score or credit report? I'm wondering...
Yes.
If you pull your annualcreditreport.com reports, you can see the promotional inquiries from the lenders.
@Anonymous wrote:
@yapsalot wrote:Yes, they do have access. What you are getting is called a pre-screened offer. Lenders purchase account data from the credit bureaus that meet the criterion the lenders set. So that's why you get unsolicited credit offers when your credit score rises, it now meets the lender's parameters for persons to whom they would like to extend credit offers. As far as a credit pull, I forget exactly how it works, perhaps someone else can answer that, but these pulls do not result in a hard pull on your credit report. So they do not affect your FICO score. The Federal Trade Commission has an explanation on their website. Here is a link: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0148-prescreened-credit-and-insurance-offers That page also has links to another website you can go to notify the credit bureaus to not send you pre-screened offers. In case the link does not come through on this post just google "how to stop pre-screened credit offers" and you should hit the FTC web page on the issue.
When lenders purchase your data for pre-screens, do they actually see your report or just score?
Good question, I have wondered this myself... Basically, other than it won't impact your score, what's the difference between a hp and a sp? As far as what the lender actually sees?
@yapsalot wrote:Regarding pre-screened offers, the FTC web page on this issue implies that the lenders do not get a copy of the report at all. Lenders give the credit bureaus the criterion for the customers they are seeking and the credit bureaus give back the names and addresses of persons meeting that criterion.
Regarding the difference between the reports that result in a hard pull and those that result in a soft pull, I have always understood that the reports were identical. The difference is that a hard pull is listed on the report in a section that is available for other creditors to see. In contrast, a soft pull is listed in a section where only the consumer can see it. Maybe someone else here knows more about this issue.
+1
THis is pretty much what I've known it to be.
@yapsalot wrote:Regarding pre-screened offers, the FTC web page on this issue implies that the lenders do not get a copy of the report at all. Lenders give the credit bureaus the criterion for the customers they are seeking and the credit bureaus give back the names and addresses of persons meeting that criterion.
Regarding the difference between the reports that result in a hard pull and those that result in a soft pull, I have always understood that the reports were identical. The difference is that a hard pull is listed on the report in a section that is available for other creditors to see. In contrast, a soft pull is listed in a section where only the consumer can see it. Maybe someone else here knows more about this issue.
Thank you for your detailed reply. This makes sense.