Soft Inquiries Disappear

[Anonymous]

I will neither confirm or deny the reason behind this, but I have a question concerning soft inquiries.  I have been pulling my score on a daily basis through Equifax Score Watch and I have accumulated over 85 soft inquiries.  Well today I got my usual daily pull and they had wiped out nearly all my soft pulls.  Now I only have 22 soft inquiries.

Well my first thought was that they split my file, but I have not seen a sign of it.  All my accounts are still there and my FAKO score is the same.

Does anyone have an idea of what happened?  Why would Equifax remove all of the soft pulls?

Thank you.

[haulingthescoreup]

Equifax removed the softs because you're pulling daily and cluttering up your file with your softs.

They do this in an attempt to prevent file splits.

Don't be terribly surprised if you start to see old closed accounts vanish before 10 years, either.

[Anonymous]

So out of curiousity, does this mean I should stop pulling daily?  Obviously I do not want my file split, but I do want to do a lot of soft inquiries . 

What is your thought?

[haulingthescoreup]

To be blunt, I think that people obsess ridiculously about the presence of inqs. Folks, they just don't represent that many points! Even our most maniacal app'ers, with 20 and 30 and 40 inqs per report, find that they are no longer dinged for inqs after the 5th or 6th one. (For all those new accounts, and the lowering of their AAoA's, yes, they most certainly do get dinged.)

I used to pull a lot in the early days, when things were changing frequently on my reports, and I was fascinated to watch the changes, but that's the only reason I did so. Although EQ is pretty good about rebuilding split files (Lord knows, they've had plenty of practice), it still takes time to figure out what's going on, find a human on the phone to start things up, dig up all the bits and pieces of data, and staple them back into place.

I would actually worry more about losing old, closed accounts. One of our members here lost a ton (~ half dozen or so, which is like a ton for scoring) of old accounts on Equifax alone, and as a result, his AAoA is much lower, as is his score.

As fascinated as I am by scoring, and as much time as I waste spend here piddling around with it, I'd still say that getting a hobby or taking a walk around the block is a much more productive use of time than daily pulling for the sake of daily pulling.

[llecs]

I miss the days of having up to 33 on EX.

Inquiry damage is overrated.

[android01]

As this fascination (addiction) to following my credit reports and scores is new, I'll admit I was curious about this concept, and tried it, even though I didn't have to.  I just wanted to see if it would work (it didn't - guess I didn't do it right).  I've come to the following conclusions as I've followed those who do this religiously:

1) Although FICO only attributes 10% importance of their score to inquiries, lenders don't like to see them regardless of scores because they see trouble ahead with anyone who is trying to seek so much credit in such a short time.  I've seen many people with good scores get turned down because of to many inquiries alone - or at least that's the reason given by lenders (not knowing what other factors may be present that they see.)  

Then there's the practical issue of FICO scores.  I follow my FAKO scores at Freecreditreport.com.  They have a filter that allows me to see a predictive score based on number of inquiries.  I currently have four on EX, ranging from 3-20 months.  I plugged in zero, and my predictive score rose 20 points!  I applied for a US Bank card last November and my EQ FICO score dropped 20 points from the inquiry alone!  I understand that these predictive score calculator results should be taken with a grain of salt, but I was surprised that there was such a drop in points (which came back within a month or two).  So I concluded, at least for me, that inquiries can radically effect scores.  

2) There is also an ethical/honesty question involved in the inquiry deletion pursuit, IMO.  Studying the process over time I estimate that many of the folks who pursue this are trying to position themselves to obtain credit cards with limits that they couldn't possibly support and are going to get in trouble as a result.  They are actively trying to deceive lenders into believing their credit profiles are better than they are in reality.  It's like lying about your income when applying for credit.  There are also many who pursue this only for the score, and are using it as a new found tool for applying for credit (mortgage, auto, etc.) at some planned future time that does not fall within the timeframe of natural inquiry drop offs, or relevance.  Although not illegal, ethics and honesty play a role in this pursuit.  There is a loophole in some of the CRA's database structure and management that someone found could be exploited.  Whether it is ethically legitimate to take advantage of this is a question that everyone must ask themselves.  

In any case I'm sure my observations may be controversial, but I thought it might make for an interesting discussion.   

[Anonymous]

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@llecs wrote:

I miss the days of having up to 33 on EX.

Inquiry damage is overrated.

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To one's score perhaps.

But when you see the "perfect" credit card you want to apply for and you have 33 INQS, you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting approved.

[android01]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@llecs wrote:

I miss the days of having up to 33 on EX.

Inquiry damage is overrated.

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To one's score perhaps.

But when you see the "perfect" credit card you want to apply for and you have 33 INQS, you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting approved.

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I guess the larger question is should someone who is actively trying to deceive a creditor by manipulating a "glitch in the matrix" be approved in the first place?  My guess is that if the creditor would not grant you credit based on your real CR, you shouldn't get another new line of credit, especially under false pretenses.  This raises another question;  Suppose those 33 inqs yielded 15 new accounts.  The consumer applies for that "perfect" card.  The creditor sees 15 new accounts and zero inquiries - on any CR.  Wouldn't this raise some sort of flag to the creditor, providing they looked close enough?  It seems to me that this process will bite you in the *ss one way or the other.  I would assume that closer scrutiny of CR's in a mortgage application might expose this issue.  Any CSR for a CCC might be trained to look for anomolies like this, unlikely, but you never know.   It seems like a big waste of time and money, is unethical, dishonest, and has the potential to damage your report and relationships with current and potential creditors, IMO.

[Anonymous]

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@android01 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@llecs wrote:

I miss the days of having up to 33 on EX.

Inquiry damage is overrated.

---

To one's score perhaps.

But when you see the "perfect" credit card you want to apply for and you have 33 INQS, you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting approved.

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I guess the larger question is should someone who is actively trying to deceive a creditor by manipulating a "glitch in the matrix" be approved in the first place?  My guess is that if the creditor would not grant you credit based on your real CR, you shouldn't get another new line of credit, especially under false pretenses.  This raises another question;  Suppose those 33 inqs yielded 15 new accounts.  The consumer applies for that "perfect" card.  The creditor sees 15 new accounts and zero inquiries - on any CR.  Wouldn't this raise some sort of flag to the creditor, providing they looked close enough?  It seems to me that this process will bite you in the *ss one way or the other.  I would assume that closer scrutiny of CR's in a mortgage application might expose this issue.  Any CSR for a CCC might be trained to look for anomolies like this, unlikely, but you never know.   It seems like a big waste of time and money, is unethical, dishonest, and has the potential to damage your report and relationships with current and potential creditors, IMO.

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Agreed.

I do not think manipulating the system is ok.

My point was that the current line of thought that inquiries have no / little effect is true as for score, but not for credit approvals as they take into account much more than score.