Excessive inquiries and accounts

[Anonymous]

My credit card report claims I have more inquiries than people with high credit scores. I don't recognize a number of  them and I wonder if they can be challenged? Can I ask to be shown they were for credit requests and that I authorized them? One at least was for re financing a mortgage. Can that sort of inquiry be held against me?

Also the report noted 29 accounts. About half of the accounts listed are closed and several are inactive. Again is it worth a challenge to get the closed accounts removed and close accounts I don't use.   

Thanks for any insights.

[RobertEG]

Disputes over credit inquiries are difficult to make, as they require challenging the permissible purpose provided to the CRA.

Your first must find the permissible purpose certified to the CRA, and then dispute its accuracy.  By the time all of that is done, the one-year period that they affect scoring is most likely near complettion or passed.

Disputes over credit inquiries are recognized by the regulators as generally not being worth the time and effort required by creditors.

As such, when enacting the new rules governing the direct dispute process, all disputes relating to credit inquiries were specifically exempted from the direct dispute process.  YOur only avenue of dispute is to go through the CRA that granted it.

Refinancing a mortgage is a request for credit, and is thus specifically authorized as a permissible purpose without need for the consumer's authorization.

Closed accounts legitmately remain in your CR.  There is no basis for requirting their deletion based on being closed.

[LS2982]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My credit card report claims I have more inquiries than people with high credit scores. I don't recognize a number of  them and I wonder if they can be challenged? Can I ask to be shown they were for credit requests and that I authorized them? One at least was for re financing a mortgage. Can that sort of inquiry be held against me?

Also the report noted 29 accounts. About half of the accounts listed are closed and several are inactive. Again is it worth a challenge to get the closed accounts removed and close accounts I don't use.   

Thanks for any insights.

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Welcome to the forums!!

As RobertEG said, the INQ's will be difficult to dispute but if you truly feel they do not belong to you it is your right to dispute them,

[llecs]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My credit card report claims I have more inquiries than people with high credit scores. I don't recognize a number of  them and I wonder if they can be challenged? Can I ask to be shown they were for credit requests and that I authorized them? One at least was for re financing a mortgage. Can that sort of inquiry be held against me?

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Ditto. Ignore the inquiries. Inquiry damage is overrated. They also only count for the first year and FICO ignores after a year old. If any were obtained for a refi, FICO will also ignore all but one within a given time frame, assuming the inquiries were for a refi.

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@Anonymous wrote:

Also the report noted 29 accounts. About half of the accounts listed are closed and several are inactive. Again is it worth a challenge to get the closed accounts removed and close accounts I don't use.   

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You absolutely, positively, definitely do NOT want to remove old accounts.......unless you want a big score drop.

[Repo-ed]

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@llecs wrote:

You absolutely, positively, definitely do NOT want to remove old accounts.......unless you want a big score drop.

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^^^This

[LS2982]

+1 on not removing accounts. Will damage your AAoA if the account is one of your oldest!

[Anonymous]

Sir.

You are not correct on the time line that inquiries drop off.  I have contacted all three big CRAs and Fair-Issac.

These hard inquiries remain on the account for up to two years.  Further, the Inquiror may request the CRA

to remove the inquiry on a goodwill request from the Consumer. The Inquiror is not required to agree, but

it is not an impossible situation as you suggest. Every hard inquiry costs between 15 and 25 point. Very

Significant, indeed.

[llecs]

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@Anonymous wrote:

You are not correct on the time line that inquiries drop off.  I have contacted all three big CRAs and Fair-Issac.

These hard inquiries remain on the account for up to two years.  Further, the Inquiror may request the CRA

to remove the inquiry on a goodwill request from the Consumer. The Inquiror is not required to agree, but

it is not an impossible situation as you suggest. Every hard inquiry costs between 15 and 25 point. Very

Significant, indeed.

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Unless I missed it, I don't think anyone suggested they drop at one year. They do report for 2 years. What was pointed out is that inquiries are only scored by FICO for one year and ignored if older than a year. If you pull your latest copy of your FICO report you'll see that inquiries are dropped from your FICO report if older than 12 months and not scored (even though they are still visible on your full report from the CRAs).

http://myfico.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/200

http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/Questions/Inquiry-Credit-Score.aspx

Just be careful in requesting inquiry removals. It can work, but there are some stories on here of creditors viewing the GW request as a dispute and those have resulted in fraud alerts (mainly EQ; rare on TU; probably never on EX).

Inquiries wouldn't damage your FICO score that much. That's steep. Now there are some non-FICO scores (we call them FAKOs) that will ding your score that much, but not per FICO scoring.

At one point, I had 30+ each on EX and EQ, and all were within a year old and were for CC apps. If 15-25 points were the case, my score would have been dinged 450-750 points, which wasn't the case. In fact, I bet a good 80% of my inquiries resulted in no score change at all (because I had so many of them). Most see an impact as their scores are higher and most see an impact if they have 0-1 inquiries already and no recently added accounts.

Now 15-25 is certainly plausible if a new account is added. On average I've lost 20-25 with each new account. Many have viewed or observed score drops after applying and don't realize the new TL did that, as opposed to the inquiry.

[daveg38]

Mod Cut

Just my two cents if GW letters aren't working and you need a cheap means to remove things.

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Recommendations to specific credit repair sites are not allowed.

MarineVietVet, myFICO moderator

[Education44]

It could turn out to be a disaster. I did that very thing and a couple of the companies that showed as inquiries had them removed but then submitted fraud alerts to all three credit bureaus. I'm still trying to have them removed.