Credit Report Question

[Anonymous]

So in reviewing my CRs from here on myfico is see on both the EQ and TU that I have 3 separate inq last year when I was shopping for a car loan! I did ALL my apping within a two week period! Shouldn't they all show up as only 1 inq!?!?!?!? Someone help me or correct me if I'm wrong. 

[crunching_numbers]

Although they will each appear as separate items on your report, FICO will treat them as one inq for calculation purposes.

[rckstrscott]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

So in reviewing my CRs from here on myfico is see on both the EQ and TU that I have 3 separate inq last year when I was shopping for a car loan! I did ALL my apping within a two week period! Shouldn't they all show up as only 1 inq!?!?!?!? Someone help me or correct me if I'm wrong. 

---

Plus... in addition to only being counted as one INQ, if it was last year, once it hits the 1 year mark it will no longer factor into scoring...

-scott

[LS2982]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

So in reviewing my CRs from here on myfico is see on both the EQ and TU that I have 3 separate inq last year when I was shopping for a car loan! I did ALL my apping within a two week period! Shouldn't they all show up as only 1 inq!?!?!?!? Someone help me or correct me if I'm wrong. 

---

Any INQ that was done is going to show up independantly but FICO scoring counts it as 1 from how they are coded.

[Duke-of-Earl]

---

@LS2982 wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

So in reviewing my CRs from here on myfico is see on both the EQ and TU that I have 3 separate inq last year when I was shopping for a car loan! I did ALL my apping within a two week period! Shouldn't they all show up as only 1 inq!?!?!?!? Someone help me or correct me if I'm wrong. 

---

Any INQ that was done is going to show up independantly but FICO scoring counts it as 1 from how they are coded.

---

Ah, that reminds me of something I've been wondering about.  It's the crucial phrase "from how they are coded".  I often see something to this effect said on these forums (not just by you, LS2982), but it seems that information on just how any particular INQ has been coded is hard to find.  The only place I know of is on my USAA Experian Credit Check Monitoring Premium reports, which show a "business type" item for each INQ.  (I'm not a major report puller and could easily be ignorant of many other options, though.)

I have 9 INQs from a 3-business-day period of mortgage shopping, one from each CRA for each of 3 lenders.  My concern is that only 3 of the "business type" items for those pulls say anything about "mortgage".  All those are on the EX INQs.  For EQ, all 3 INQs show "Misc. Reptg. Agencies", and for TU, all are "Misc. and public record".

So I wonder if all nine got "aggregated" correctly.

The report comes from EX, and maybe they don't want to say accurately what the others report?

Or maybe the other CRAs are giving EX misleading info?  That would screw up the way scoring is supposed to work.

Does anyone know whether this "business type" item is the relevant one for the "coding"?  Or where I can get complete and accurate info on how my INQs are coded?

[llecs]

---

@Duke-of-Earl wrote:

Or where I can get complete and accurate info on how my INQs are coded?

---

I'd focus on the reports pulled from the CRAs directly when zeroing in on permissible purpose.

[RobertEG]

Duke, the entire process of coding credit inquiries has remained a mystery to me for years.

I have never seen a clear explantion of either the codes available, or even how or who enters them.

I know a party requesting your CR has to provide a permissible purpose to the CRA, and most credtiors have on file a statement of general permissible purposes or their inquiries.  So they dont usually provide a specific certification with each inquiry.

That is kinda where my understanding of the process moves from what is required under the FCRA into the murky waters of how the inquiry is administratively handled.

The FCRA makes absolutely no mention of "hard" or "soft" inquiries, other than the distinction and limitation placed on promotional inquiries.

Does the party making the inquiry provide the inquiry code to the CRA, or do the CRAs enter an inquiry code based on the stated permissible purpose?

In either event, take the example of a party requested your CR based on an app for new credit.  The permissible purpose is just about as "hard" as they come, as consumer-initiated requests for new credit are the primary purpose for even tracking inquiries.

If a credtior reports their permissible purpose as being a consumer-initiated request for credit, is there a credit report code that reads "consumer-initiated request for credit, but we want it recorded so the FICO does not see it as such?"  Or do they have to fabricate a different stated purpose to get it coded as a type of inquiry that FICO does not score?  How in the world does a creditor get an obviously "hard" purpose coded as "soft?"

[Duke-of-Earl]

Thanks, llecs, your suggestion makes sense.  But I've had little success along that route.  My report pulled directly from EQ just lists the inquiring company names, addresses, and phone numbers, says nothing about PP nor about the coding I'd like to verify.  The same is true for a report I bought from TU.  Ironically, the annual free report I pulled from TU at the same time has more info: it does show PP, but it's just "Credit Transaction" in all cases, there's no coding indicating the type of loan I applied for.  I suppose the EX column in the 3-bureau report I got from their USAA credit monitoring service might be considered a direct CRA report, and it was good to see that those, at least, did show "Mortgage Companies" as the business type.

[Duke-of-Earl]

Thanks, Robert.  If this coding process is a mystery to you, with all the experience that's evident in so many of your posts, then I guess my question may have to remain unanswered.  In this case, I'm not specifically interested in the PP, except insofar as possibly showing the type of credit I was applying for, and possibly being used to aggregate all these INQs together for scoring purposes.  I guess the fact that two of the three lenders I contacted offered me very good rates at least suggests they didn't think I was going on an app spree.