Inquiries on your Credit Report

Inquiries On Your Credit Report

Excessive inquiries on your credit report can destroy your loan efforts with a lender and lower your score.

Any time you apply for credit or loan, your credit report is pulled by that creditor or lender. This is
referred to as an inquiry. The name of the potential lender will appear under "inquiries" at the end of your
credit report. This will remain on your report for two years and FICO for one year. In some cases you may
find a bunch of numbers instead of names explaining who they are. You will have to ask the credit bureau
to verify the names of these individuals and provide proof that you gave them authorization to inquire
about your credit.

There are two types of inquiries that you should be aware of. The hard inquiry is when you authorize a
lender to view your report when applying for credit or loan. This type of inquiry will have an affect on
your score.

The soft inquiry is when a lender or creditor will order your credit report to qualify you for a special or
pre-approved offer. This does not affect your credit score.

When shopping for things such as a car loan or mortgage, it's common practice for the salesperson or
broker to run your report several times for different finance companies. The scoring system understands
this and allows a grace period of about two weeks to shop around for a loan. All the inquiries within a 14
day period are considered as one. Make sure that you get finances within that time or all those inquiries
will work against your credit score.

If you have too many inquiries on your report, listed in a short period of time, the lenders may think that
you are in financial trouble and being denied credit. When four or more inquiries appear on your credit
report within a two month period, a message of Trans-Alert is listed on your credit report. This tells the
creditors that you have applied for credit excessively.

To dispute an inquiry, you need to deal directly with the creditor that placed it on your report. In your
letter, ask them for proof that you authorized them to pull your report. If they cannot provide the proof in
writing, they must by law remove the inquiry from your credit report.

In many cases the creditor may not have the time to go back into their records to verify your account and
the inquiry will be deleted from your file.
You can also dispute the inquiry with the credit bureau. Ask them what legitimate business reason they
had to give out your personal credit information to that company. If they cannot provide that information,
they will delete the inquiry. Not always, but often one with poor credit could use the services of a debt consolidation company. It would be worth your time to investigate to whether or not a quality service could help you out.