How do I know which pull is hard or soft on my credit report?

[Anonymous]

I ordered 3 credit report from last week. I see a lot of pull on my report. How do I know which one is hard pull? and which one is soft pull? Thank you very much for your help.

[llecs]

The only place you can see soft inquiries is via the reports pulled directly from the CRAs or annualcreditreport.com. It's been a while since I pulled, but IIRC the full report will either have 2 or 3 sections for inquiries depending on the CRA. One is for hard pulls and the other one or two for softs. Of the softs, it'll either separate the promotional inquiries (PRM) or lump them together with the account reviews (AR), including inquiries from report pulls or any other credit product you subscribe to). Unless they changed the formatting, the first section of inquiries are the hard inquiries. These inquiries were credit initiated by you and says something to that effect.

[Anonymous]

I ordered my credit reports from http://identitymonitor.citi.com/

Are they different report with annualcreditreport.com? In your message, you used a lot of words that I dont understand such as CRAs, IIRC, CRA? would you explain for me these words please?

[llecs]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I ordered my credit reports from http://identitymonitor.citi.com/

Are they different report with annualcreditreport.com? In your message, you used a lot of words that I dont understand such as CRAs, IIRC, CRA? would you explain for me these words please?

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Common Abbreviations

CRA = credit reporting agency (e.g. TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax). CRAs is the plural form of that.

IIRC = If I recall correctly

Citi's IdentityMonitor service doesn't offer soft inquiries. The reports purchased from the CRAs or via the free ones at annualcreditreport look much, much differently and contain more info. Now the credit monitoring service you are using is good for keeping tabs on things and isn't bad (just ignore the scores and advice).