Credit Inquiries

[Anonymous]

Is there a way to minimize the number of inquiries one of your credit card companies can "inquire" your credit? One of my credit card companies inquiries every single month. I have a good score and have never missed a payment, so i don't know why they keep checking.

[MidnightVoice]

The inqs you are describing should be soft pulls and have no effect on your score

[RobertEG]

bmarric, as has  been stated, those are all soft pulls, so they dont count in scoring.  So dont sweat them.

But be aware that soft credit pulls from your existing creditors are not subject to the same limitations under the FCRA as those with whom you dont have credit, and are seeking a soft pull merely to offer  you new credit.  The former can pull your full CR in order to evaluate  your credit at any time, while the later can retrieve only your name and address.  Soft pulls do not count in your scoring, but all soft pulls are not created equal.

Message Edited by RobertEG on 05-27-2008 06:27 PM

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Is there a way to minimize the number of inquiries one of your credit card companies can "inquire" your credit? One of my credit card companies inquiries every single month. I have a good score and have never missed a payment, so i don't know why they keep checking.

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Just to be certain: bmarric, which report are you looking at, and where exactly are you seeing these repeated inquiries?

If you're looking at a full report, purchased directly from one of the CRA's (credit bureaus), you might be seeing them in a section subtitled something like "requests for your credit viewable only by you." If so, those are indeed soft inquiries, and you're OK. Just be aware that this CCC is very interested in your credit behavior with all your cards, so make sure that you're actively paying down and off your cards! (Don't worry about loans; just stay timely on them.)

But if you're seeing these on myFICO reports, or TrueCredit reports, or on reports from any of the other monitoring companies, then they are being coded as hard inquiries, and you need to get your CCC to recode them as softs.

Welcome to the forums, by the way!

[RobertEG]

Also be aware that just because a hard inquiry apears on your CR, that does not necessarily mean that it affects your score.  Auto and mortgage inquiries less than one month old never count in scoring, and neither do any inquiries over 12 months old, even though they continue to show in your CR for two years

For auto/mortgage inquires, once they are over 30 days old, FICO then looks at all such inquiries within a moving 14 day window as only a single inquiry.  This is the so-called shopping window.

[Anonymous]

Robert -

I'm not sure about the info re: mortgage inq's not hurting until a month after pulling: We had a mortgage inquiry & it dropped our scores by 4pts the day it posted, which was the day after the report was pulled.

[RobertEG]

I am quite sure about it, since this comes directly from FairIsaac in one of their webinars.  They state that the scoring algoritm ignores mortgage/auto inquiries under 30 days.

[fused]

Here's the skinny on mortgage and auto inqs.

FICO scoring has a de-duplication window and it looks at your inq history, and when it sees two or more hard inqs for the same type of mortgage or auto loan it will ignore all but one of them as far as scoring is concerned. If the lender is using an older FICO scoring model the window is 14 days, if they are using the newest model it can be up to 45 days.

Also keep in mind that even though the multiple inqs count as one in FICO scoring, all of the inqs will show-up on your CRA reports for up to 2 years. FICO will only count these multiple inqs as one if they are properly coded as mortgage or auto pulls, if not, your scores will take a bigger hit.

[RobertEG]

Fusedl, you are correct, as always.  FICO versions have different windows for de-dup.. Under older FICO, it is 15 days.  Newer FICO release increased that window to 45 days in recognition of increased consumer action for rate shopping.

But under either, no mort/auto inq scores until it is over 30 days.  That is per FairIsaac, and should not be open to debate.

Message Edited by RobertEG on 06-01-2008 01:52 AM

Message Edited by RobertEG on 06-01-2008 01:53 AM

[RobertEG]

So-called soft inquiries (ie, those not intitated by a consumer) may not, under federal law, as specified in the following  statutory provision of the FCRA, be provided to anyone without your prior authorization.  Period  I quote:

a consumer reporting agency shall not furnish to any person a record of inquiries in connection with a credit or insurance transaction that is not initiated by a consumer.