Some Uncomfortable Truth About Inquiries

[MercyMe]

Well, good for them, you and us!  Had they not been married, God knows where you would be!  Probably not here, among the likes of we who need you so badly!!!!!

[Anonymous]

On a serious note, if I ever became independently wealthy, I would finish college and probably attend law school. This pursuit of better credit crusade makes one realize how rigged things are for the consumer. If one isn't wealthy enough to afford a lawyer, OCs, CA, JDBs and CRAs can bollix up a consumer but good. Only alternative is to do the initial gruntwork necessary to get a lawyer to take one's case pro bono or on contingency. Or sue pro se.

[Anonymous]

Ok..so I have about 25 inquiries on my credit report....10 are from last year when I tried to purchase a vehicle...what do I do to get them off...?

[llecs]

The only option is to wait. They will fall off at 2 yrs and will stop impacting FICO scoring after 1 yr. Plus auto and mortgage inquiries count as one single inquiry if pulled within a 14 or 30 day period.

[Anonymous]

ok..so now I am confused...do all of the auto credit inquiry's really count as one or not...according to Noah_bodie's initial post:

Cars and CCs

Let us delve a little deeper into these analogies. You show up at the Chevy dealer interested in a car, but you are not sure which one.

You tell them you are interested in the Impala, so they pull your credit. They come back and say, sorry, for what you want to put down, we cannot finance an Impala for you.

OK, fine. How about the Malibu? They pull your credit again, but they cannot finance it for you either.

OK, well, how about the Cobalt? Pull your credit again, and yeah we can do that. Here are your terms. Hmmmmmmm. Don't like those very much.

So you head off to the Ford dealer to get your credit pulled a bunch more times.

Ten credit pulls in all later, you head home with a new Dodge Caliber. Oh, and those ten credit pulls are not all grouped together as one inquiry. It is ten inquiries.

That is what it is like when you go credit card shopping. You get stung with an inquiry by each company (Chase, CITI, BOA, WAMU, etc.) and you get stung for each product for which you try to get credit approval. Sometimes you luck out when you apply for more than one CC from the same company all in the same day--like with AMEX.

So...who is right? 

Is it possible to in some way request their removal?

My friend signed up with Lexingtonlaw and he says that they have a thing called Inquiry Assist in which they help you to remove the inquiry's...is this true?  does anyone know?

Thanks!!

[llecs]

Noah wasn't referring to FICO scoring at all in that post.

Yes, if 10 pulls are made at the dealer you have 10 inquiries. They will stay for 2 years. Per FICO scoring, FICO will stop counting them after 1 year. Per FICO scoring, all inquiries are grouped together and counted as one for all mortgage and car-related inquiries. So, if a dealer pulled your credit 10 times, you are only being dinged for one inquiry.

http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/CreditInquiries.aspx

If they are legit inquiries, they cannot be removed. If you tried it, you'll get hit with a FA.

LexLaw is a scam. Avoid them. They will charge you money to ruin your credit.

IMO, inquiry damage is overrated. It is much ado about nothing. At my peak, I had 35 inquiries on EX with 25 on EQ. Only once was I denied for excessive inquiries, and that was with Juniper when I went from 1 inquiry to 2 on TU. What a spaz. And while I was adding those inquiries (CC-related), I did not see any score drop and I frequently pull my FICO reports several times monthly. Most of the damage occurs when you go from zero to one or one to two inquiries and have a high score 700+.

[Anonymous]

Well thank you for clearing that up!!