It's not just you, it seems to be the trend for various lender's periodic ARs. Some lenders use the same moniker for both their ARs and their credit monitoring services which makes it even more difficult to decipher. Chase's ARs and Credit Journey both just show up as "Chase" for example, while their promotional marketing pulls show up as JPMCB Card. I don't see any harm in simply showing the most recent one. If you're concerned, I would recommend keeping a spreadsheet or jotting the dates down in the notebook.
I don't see how it'd be "illegal." I mean, we know our creditors keep tabs on us all the time, and as long as they're not HPing you to do it, I don't see how deleting old SPs (which may not even be their fault; it could be the service you're using as mentioned above or it could be the CRAs themselves deleting/merging SPs together) is wrong.
Question, why is it so important to know how often they're SPing you? Most people outside of MyFICO don't even know what HPs and SPs are, let alone keep track of who is SPing them and how often.
I'm assuming OP is getting data from annualcreditreport.com. That is where I am
viewing my SPs, and while pulls from some lenders seem to stick around for years, there are certainly others that seem to drop off once the next SP is performed, just as OP is referring to. No, it doesn't make any real difference, but what is the point of these forums if not to dissect the inner workings of various FIs and the FICO algorithms? I also agree with @Anonymous in that it's probably to prevent split files. I can't imagine that storage would be a real factor as text files take virtually no space. The amount of SPs I receive is insane due to all of the credit monitoring products I am subscribed to.
@Curious_George2 wrote:Yep, ACR is my source for these. That's as official as we consumers can get, right?
In response to the question of why it matters to me (which strikes me as quite rude): I care partly because I am engaged in the hobby of trying to understand the systems used for credit reporting and scoring. This is a forum devoted to that purpose. Seems like the right place to post questions like this.
Also, I am watching Capital One in particular because I have been trying for months to understand their CLI rules in more detail. I understand that most people don't care enough to bother. That's fine. But for me, it is helpful to know what facts they are basing their decision on. If they say my Util is too high, I want to know which report they pulled and when, so I can understand exactly what they considered to be too high.
My apologies, I did not mean to come off as rude. I was simply curious why it was so important, as usually it's only HPs that people worry about since those are visible to other lenders when applying for credit/some lenders are inquiry sensitive. I understand now. Again, I apologize.
As for your watching Capital One, my understanding is they update the SP on file for you every 2-3 months, so perhaps you could try to look through the SPs and find the one's coded as AR and try to figure it out that way.