Will removing hard inquiries boost your credit score?

[Anonymous]

I am currently rebuilding ny credit. I am working on removing the hard inquiries. A few of them had been deleted. Will my score eventually increase from the hard pulls being removed?

[Anonymous]

You're going to likely find yourself in a world of hurt by doing this. 

Hard inquiries for credit you requested stays on for only 2 years and doesn't make a huge punch to FICO if your credit report is otherwise clean.

If you dispute inquiries attached to good accounts, you can lose the accounts from your report.  Worse, the CRAs might put fraud alerts on your credit reports which makes it more difficult to get credit later while the fraud report is still ongoing.

DO NOT DISPUTE INQUIRIES that are correct.  They will age off naturally in 2 years, and it generally takes 2 years to fully rehab credit.  It's not a sprint, learn some patience in this process and you will be rewarded with a great FICO score over time.

[Anonymous]

The ones that I am disputing I don't have account for. Some inquiries I have no knowledge of. By doing this I actually found out that my childrens aunt got cable turned on in my name.

[Anonymous]

In that case it's time to file a police report and start the identity theft process. It's a long and ongoing one but if someone is stealing your credit, you need to work on that as well as your own derogatories.

Expect to get a fraud alert on your reports eventually -- so you want to back that up with the proper police reports and other government filings.

[RobertEG]

The better approach is often to contact the inquiree and request they recode the inquiry as soft.

The CRAs follow the toothpaste is out of the tube view of inquiries, recognizing that once they have sent someone your credit report, they have legal obligations to preserve that fact.  They usually respond with the statement that, once filled, an inquiry becomes a fact that cannot be undone.......

[Glen_M]

Score increases from inquiries being removed will generally be minor, but it sounds like you have good reasons to remove them anyway.  You're more likely to see positive results in the form of fewer "red flags" being triggered by the review process with new accounts (ie, you're less likely to get rejection excuses like "too many recent inquiries", or "too much recent credit seeking").

[Anonymous]

Also keep in mind that while inquiries are present on your credit report for 2 years, they only impact scoring for 1 year.