Soft Inquiries and Credit Bureaus

Anonymous · ‎09-27-2015

When I check my credit inquiries on Equifax I can see both the hard and soft inquiries. I cannot do that on TransUnion or Experian. Am I missing something? Thanks in advance for any responses.

RobertEG · ‎09-27-2015

It depends upon what the composer of the report decided to include or was authorized to obtain.

By definition, a soft pull is one that may be viewed only by the identified consumer, and is not available to any other party in a credit report they obtain.

A credit report obtained by any party other than the consumer thus cannot show the so-called soft inquiries.

Thus, many commercial credit reports include, as standard procedure, only so-called hard inquiries.

When a consumer pulls their own report, they are entitled to a report that shows both hard and softs. However, vendors will only have access to the softs if they are clerarly acting as the agent of the named consumer. That complicates matters for vendors, as they would have to provide evidence of acting as a representative of the consumer to obtain the softs, so they usually only provide one vanilla type of report..... one that shows only hards.

Your vendor who also shows softs obviously presented certiication to the CRA that they were acting as your designated agent (which applies to most credit monitoring sites).

However, the special site at annualcreditreport.com is sanctioned under the FCRA and limited ONLY to a consumer pulling their own credit report.

Thus, all reports obtained via that site can show softs.

takeshi74 · ‎09-28-2015

@Anonymous wrote:
When I check my credit inquiries on Equifax I can see both the hard and soft inquiries. I cannot do that on TransUnion or Experian. Am I missing something?

Are you actually getting your reports directly from each CRA? Most monitoring services will not be able to provide soft pulls.

If you are going directly to the CRA's it can be tricky. If you're not getting just the report you may not see the soft pulls. The CRA's have credit services in addition to the reports and some of those services do not provide soft pulls on the reports provided. Sometimes you have to dig around a bit to find just the report as the CRA's tend to push their other services.

Anonymous · ‎09-28-2015

@RobertEG wrote:
It depends upon what the composer of the report decided to include or was authorized to obtain.

By definition, a soft pull is one that may be viewed only by the identified consumer, and is not available to any other party in a credit report they obtain.
A credit report obtained by any party other than the consumer thus cannot show the so-called soft inquiries.
Thus, many commercial credit reports include, as standard procedure, only so-called hard inquiries.

When a consumer pulls their own report, they are entitled to a report that shows both hard and softs. However, vendors will only have access to the softs if they are clerarly acting as the agent of the named consumer. That complicates matters for vendors, as they would have to provide evidence of acting as a representative of the consumer to obtain the softs, so they usually only provide one vanilla type of report..... one that shows only hards.
Your vendor who also shows softs obviously presented certiication to the CRA that they were acting as your designated agent (which applies to most credit monitoring sites).

However, the special site at annualcreditreport.com is sanctioned under the FCRA and limited ONLY to a consumer pulling their own credit report.
Thus, all reports obtained via that site can show softs.

Good to know. Thanks.

Anonymous · ‎09-28-2015

@takeshi74 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
When I check my credit inquiries on Equifax I can see both the hard and soft inquiries. I cannot do that on TransUnion or Experian. Am I missing something?
Are you actually getting your reports directly from each CRA? Most monitoring services will not be able to provide soft pulls.

If you are going directly to the CRA's it can be tricky. If you're not getting just the report you may not see the soft pulls. The CRA's have credit services in addition to the reports and some of those services do not provide soft pulls on the reports provided. Sometimes you have to dig around a bit to find just the report as the CRA's tend to push their other services.

Yes, I am. Thank you. I will go "digging around" today.