@Anonymous wrote:
Sorry I don't know how to use quoting here.
Well, your advice was spot on. I went back to Karma and sure enough it was the ISP who "assured" me that they don't do hard pulls!
This insences me to no end. How can they just LIE like that? I specifically told him I do NOT agree to hard pull! If the call was recorded they have it on tape!
Lastly, how do I know how much this damages my score? Karma is showing my Fico at 732, which is about what my credit cards say, but I'm trying to improve it. I never would've agreed to them doing that. So there's nothing I can do?
Hi Iwan2. Sorry you've had such a bad experience.
RobertEG wrote this in his response earlier:
"... the CRAs are not likley to remove the inquiry based on a dispute."
I am pretty sure that he's using the term dispute in a very technical sense, which means going through the CRA first, complaining that something on your report is incorrect. He's right that they'll just contact the company that did the inquiry, who will then say that you really did give them your social and so forth, in which case the CRA will tell you that the inquiry has been verified. That's how the "dispute" process works. The CRA is not equipped to investigate complaints about customer service reps failing to understand their company's process and policy correctly.
On the other hand, RobertEG might also tell you that going through the dispute process is not your only option. You could go the other direction, which is to talk to the company that intiated the inquiry. (It sounds like you said they were an internet service provider.)
If you have already had an angry conversation with them, you may be out of luck, since they often flag such people as such and are less likely to help them. If you have not, however, then you could give them a call and see what they can do. I think RobertEG has explained to me that creditors have great latitude at getting CRAs to delete stuff on your report, so if you can get them to a place where they feel bad, then they might be very willing to do this.
If you go this route, you'll need to remain calm and courteous throughout the call, avoiding words like "lie." Your strategy should be to keep circling back to how proactive you were at making sure there would be no hard pull, how your score was damaged, how you are sure the rep was well intentioned but as a result if misrepresenting what would happen you score has been damaged etc.
Get them on your side, help them feel bad about what happened, explain that you just need them to reach out to the CRA and delete the hard pull, how you want to be a future customer but this has not made it easy, and so on.
RobertEG may know more about whether they can delete the inquiry if they decide their company policy might have been miscommunicated.
Finally, as far as score impact -- it's just one inquiry on one CRA. Very small issue in the scheme of things. It did not have a big effect on your score (ten points max and probably less) and all scoring impact will vanish 12 months from now.
