Inquiries not affecting FICO score?

[Anonymous]

I have the free trial of ScoreWatch. I got my initial FICO score, then a week later it said I gained 5 points from an inquiry getting older. Then I applied and received 2 new credit cards just barely. ScoreWatch told me I had a new inquiry on my account, but did not say it changed my score this time. Is this typical? Or is SW just omitting info of my FICO score changing?

[jackg]

I really like ScoreWatch and have about 3 years worth of experience with it. The great thing is that once you have a good understanding of what's in your EQ report and you pay close attention to every alert you get ther will rarely be a need to pull MYFICO.

From you post it sounds likely that you haven't applied for credit for the last couple years. Then you appd for 2 cards and of the creditors pulled EQ and did not penaloze you for doing so. You may or may not be penalized when the new accounts are posted. My guess is that since there are 2 you probably will lose a couple points. Had it been one you might have got away with it, depending on the rest of your info.

I'm assuming that your question, (Is this typical?) is in referrence to the fact that an inquiry did not cost you any points. It is not typical. As I said I think it's probable that you haven't appd. for credit in 18 mos to 2 years and that's why. Remember that a segment of FICO scoring relate to new credit and the favor it on their time line.

ScoreWatch cannot ignore info. SW has no relavency to FICO scores, it's just a monitoring tool.

Good Luck

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info. And yes, it has been about 2 years since I got my last credit card, but I was getting bored with it and decided to open a PenFed one for the 1.25% cash back, and a Chevron one for the 10 cent discount per gallon of gas. I think the only other inquiry I had on my report prior to that was Comcast (which bothered me since I didn't know they did a hard inq. just to set up internet service).

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I have the free trial of ScoreWatch. I got my initial FICO score, then a week later it said I gained 5 points from an inquiry getting older. Then I applied and received 2 new credit cards just barely. ScoreWatch told me I had a new inquiry on my account, but did not say it changed my score this time. Is this typical? Or is SW just omitting info of my FICO score changing?

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Every time you get a SW alert (no matter what the cause) your EQ score is recalculated. So if you got an alert for the INQ's and your score did not change it truly did not change.

[RobertEG]

There is simply no way to peg any change or lack of change of credit score based on a new inquiry, or aging of a prior inquiry, directly to the impact of the inquiry.  Accounts age, payment history ages, % utils change.

There are dozens of things going on.  Maybe a new inq by itself might have been negatively impacting, but it may have been offset by other changes in other categories.

The bottom line with the impact of inquires is that FICO does not score them at all after 12 months.

[Anonymous]

Good to know. I was expecting my score to drop another 10 points or so for getting new credit.