Is it normal to get an HP from attempting to add an authorized user?

[minimist]

I'm a little upset and confused by this action as it caused me a 4 point drop and I'm trying to avoid inqs for the rest of the year.

My West Elm card is currently sitting at a 0 balance. My sister will be starting college soon and doesn't have any credit of her own. She wanted to get a few dorm items from there so we thought it'd be a good idea to add her as an auth user to my account to give her some revolving action. I initiated that request online about 2 weeks ago.

A few days ago they send me an email stating the request couldn't be completed and they'd send me a letter stating why. Fine, whatever she can just use my card. I have yet to receive a letter.

Today I get an alert stating that my Experian report was pulled and my score decreased, lo and behold it was Comenity/West Elm. I tried to find this online and in their policies and cannot find anything that stated they will pull your credit report simply to add an AU. At most if they needed to pull a report it should have been my sister's and not mine. I didn't request anything else credit limit wise.

Has anyone had any experience with Comenity doing this before? Saw a few similar threads for other banks and it seems not to be the norm for anyone. I sent them a message and will call in a couple of hours but I feel like this is really ridiculous.

[AppHappyTog]

Comenity is a really but pain in the rear with this crap. They hit me with 5 hard pulls last December for cli requests through the online portals (not selecting the box asking them to run a hard inquiry). They also tried to hit me with a hard pull when I requested my last name be changed on my pier 1 card after I got married and overstock tried when I tried to remove my husband as an authorized user on that account. Basically, in my experience, they just like to hit you with a hard pull whenever they feel like it because they can. If you call, they'll just give you some b.s. spill about having tried to contact you via the number listed on your credit report and we unable to so they ran your report...

Anyways, I've had my experian locked since December because of comenity.

[UncleB]

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@minimist wrote:

I'm a little upset and confused by this action as it caused me a 4 point drop and I'm trying to avoid inqs for the rest of the year.

My West Elm card is currently sitting at a 0 balance. My sister will be starting college soon and doesn't have any credit of her own. She wanted to get a few dorm items from there so we thought it'd be a good idea to add her as an auth user to my account to give her some revolving action. I initiated that request online about 2 weeks ago.

A few days ago they send me an email stating the request couldn't be completed and they'd send me a letter stating why. Fine, whatever she can just use my card. I have yet to receive a letter.

Today I get an alert stating that my Experian report was pulled and my score decreased, lo and behold it was Comenity/West Elm. I tried to find this online and in their policies and cannot find anything that stated they will pull your credit report simply to add an AU. At most if they needed to pull a report it should have been my sister's and not mine. I didn't request anything else credit limit wise.

Has anyone had any experience with Comenity doing this before? Saw a few similar threads for other banks and it seems not to be the norm for anyone. I sent them a message and will call in a couple of hours but I feel like this is really ridiculous.

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Do you have a fraud alert on your credit file?

American Express is known to do a HP to add an AU if there's a fraud alert... they claim it's required to get the contact phone number from the report that's associated with the alert. 

[minimist]

@ UncleB no I don't have any fraud alerts on EX just one on EQ from the breach.

So I called them and they gave me the same bs as AppHappyTog - They stated that they couldn't contact me on the number listed on my credit report therefore they ran an inquiry...wth does that have to do with anything? My phone number isn't even listed on my reports, but guess where it IS listed: in my account center. Along with my email and mailing addresses that they've had no issues contacting me through before. The rep stated she would escalate my request so we'll see if that actually does anything but I am definitely freezing my reports after this. It doesn't seem like Experian will let you disoute inquiries, only accounts.

[UncleB]

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@minimist wrote:

@ UncleB no I don't have any fraud alerts on EX just one on EQ from the breach.

So I called them and they gave me the same bs as AppHappyTog - They stated that they couldn't contact me on the number listed on my credit report therefore they ran an inquiry...wth does that have to do with anything? My phone number isn't even listed on my reports, but guess where it IS listed: in my account center. Along with my email and mailing addresses that they've had no issues contacting me through before. The rep stated she would escalate my request so we'll see if that actually does anything but I am definitely freezing my reports after this. It doesn't seem like Experian will let you disoute inquiries, only accounts.

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All we can do is speculate, but the alert on EQ might have been the culprit since we've seen that before (even if they're not usually an EQ puller, they might have picked up the alert via an AR).

Alerts can be a two-edged sword.  I recall a couple of cases where Amex did a HP to add an AU and said it was just to get a phone number as well... something about the alert requiring it.  I don't know if this is a rule or just practice, but in any case we've seen it before.

Like I said, though, this is just speculation.

Here are a couple of the instances I describe:  https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/General-Credit-Topics/I-added-authorize-user-to-my-Amex-and-they-di...