Second HP without my consent, HELP!

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm new here and I wish that I can find help for this.
I have a sears master card for over a year now but 2 weeks ago they did a hard pull in my equifax file without my consent nor my knowledge. I never asked for a new CC or a CLI.
When I contacted them they told me that it wasn't a mistake and they intentionally hard pulled my file for verification purpose because I changed my address!!! and since I have a credit card with them I already give them my authorization to hard pull my file whenever they want.
Is this really true?
Do I have any chance to fight this?
Thanks

[09Lexie]

Welcome to the forum. While receiving an inq for an address change may seem harsh, the lenders are well within their right to review your credit inorder to 'maintain' your account.

You might try writing and asking them to remove the hard pull and see if they could use a sp.

[RobertEG]

Yes, internal account reviews give rise to permissible purpose to pull your credit report without express approval.

However, it should NOT be coded as a hard inquiry.

When they request your credit report, they must provide a statement of permissible purpose under one or more sections of FCRA 604.

If they provided as permissible purpose an internal account review,  those are rountinely coded by the CRAs as a so-called "soft" inquiry, meaning it should not appear in any credit reports they issue to anyone other than the consumer.

If it is appearing in credit reports available to others, I would suspect that they provided a statement of permissible purpose when making the inquiry that was inaccurate.

I would send a disipute to the CRA of the accuracy of their apparent statement of permissible purpose, providing your evidence that it was only related to an internal account review, and not any request for credit on the part of the consumer.  They are the ones who have their statement of permissible purpose in their files, and can, through their reinvestigation authority, make a determination as to its accuracy. 

You cannot handle by way of a direct dispute to the creditor.  Issues related to credit inquiries are exempt from the direct dispute process.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your help guys.
@ Robert when you said dispute it with the CRA are we talking Equifax dispute?
As to provide evidence, do you suggest I contact sears first and ask for the reason of the hard pull by writing and use their letter as an evidence?
Thanks again :-)

[AndySoCal]

You need to review your cardholder agreement and in it says yes they can pull your credit.

[RobertEG]

There is no question of whether or not they can pull your credit report.  Thus, absence of such authorizatin in your cardholder agreement is not basis for preventing their inquiry.  The entire purpose of FCRA 604 is to define permssible purposes that require no express consumer pre-authorization.  Authorization is based only on meeting one of the stated permissible purposes, not upon express consumer approval.

The issue is not whether they had authority to pull, but only whether they provided an accurate statement of that permisible purpose to the CRA, which controls how it will be coded, and thus whether it will appear in credit reports made available to others, including FICO scorers.

Yes, if you can obtan a clear statment from the creditor that their purpose was not related to any request for credit initiated by you, and only for internal account review, then the standard coding of such inquires is a soft nquiry that wont show in credit reports they issue to others.

Yes, the dispute would go to the CRA to which they made the inquiry.  They have the statement of permissible purpose provided by the creditor, which is basis for them to factually resolve whether it was different from what they have stated to you was their permissible purpose.  They have the authority to simply correct under their reinvestigation authorty, as they are the final decision maker on any dipsute send through them.

[Anonymous]

Many many thanks RobertEG.
Now I know exactly what to do. :-)