How Do You Get Credit Inquiries Off Your Credit Report?
Removing credit inquiries from your report can be a time-consuming process but it is worth the effort to ensure the information is correct.
Whenever you apply for credit, be it a credit card or loan, whether for a car, a house, or anything else, your credit report is usually run by the credit provider. That means that a hard inquiry is reported on your credit report as a result of the above process. Applying for credit in a short time is considered a sign of credit insecurity and therefore it is advised that applicants do not apply for too many inquiries in a short span. Below is a guide that will help you to understand more about how to remove the inquiries from your credit file.
What Is Meant by Credit Inquiry?
A credit inquiry is a process carried out by a lending institution when they want to review your credit history to determine creditworthiness for another credit application.
There are two main types of credit inquiries:
Hard Inquiries: These are usually those you apply for for new credit credit such as applying for a credit card or a loan. Hard inquiries are a poor factor that can reduce your credit score slightly for up to two years but the effects are not so bad especially if you had many inquiries made in a short period.
Soft Inquiries: Soft inquiries are normally from companies that are conducting credit checks to decide whether to extend credit to you or not and will mostly be pre-approved credit checks or you conducting a credit check on your own. Soft inquiries neither add nor subtract from your credit score in any way.
The duration of time that the hard inquiries will be on the credit report will also depend on the credit bureau involved or the country of the credit reporting system.
Few late payments or derogatory marks survive on credit reports for more than seven years according to the rules of the Fair Credit Reporting Act FCRA though hard inquiries disappear much earlier.
Specifically:
Credit inquiries that Equifax receives are deleted 24 months from the time they are posted.
Experian can delete credit inquiries that are older than 25 months from the date that they were posted.
TransUnion offers the removal of inquiries after one year of the inquiry list being generated.
However, while they remain on your credit reports for up to two years, hard inquiries are only detrimental for roughly one year. They make their presence known on your reports for a while and gradually fade away until they disappear.
Why Should One Request to Have Inquiries Erased from Their Credit Files?
You should also limit the number of inquiries that appear on your reports particularly if many of them were made within a limited period as this raises the credit risk in the eyes of potential lenders and affects your credit status. They may think that you are in a desperate search for new credit or engaging in credit binging.
In most cases, one new inquiry takes up to five points off your score, however, if your file is filled with numerous recent inquiries, then it will take a lot more points off your score. The best scores, for the most accurate results, should not have any new inquiries in the year for at least one of the credit bureaus.
You can start by eliminating inquiries that are no longer necessary or exist in multiple places and those that are incorrect. On the legal side, you also have a right to challenge other information that is potentially misleading and which harms your credit standing.
How to Contest and Get rid of Inquiry on Your Credit Report
Step one is to review all three credit reports to identify mistakes. They are indeed free but you can get them only once in one year at the website annualcreditreport.com. Review such credit inquiries for duplicates, inquiries older than two years, or any inquiries that were a result of fraud or identity theft.
Step 2 Ask lenders to retract inappropriate hard inquiries:
If you see that you have two similar requests because you applied for the same credit within a short period, you can ask the lender to delete the second inquiry. Such a situation is possible sometimes if an initial application was not handled well or if the required funding was not arranged.
If the inquiry originated from verified cases of fraud or identity theft, then request for deletion under those circumstances. In most cases, you will have to seek due support from a dispute or police complaint.
If, for one or the other reason, you were not the one to start the application or think that the lender inquiry was a mistake, then let the lender know. This negative mark will only be removed if one is certain that the inquiry was not made in good faith.
Step 3 Dispute directly with credit bureaus:
After trying to politely ask the creditor, the next course of action is to dispute the information with the credit reference agencies. You can contest it online, through a physically mailed letter, or a combination of the two. With such entries, you need to write letters to each bureau that reports the entries as false.
In the course of drafting the dispute letters, one should include laws such as FCRA and FACTA that mandate the CRAs to undertake reasonable investigations within 30 days of the complaint. Provide a logical explanation as to why the current form of inquiry is illegitimate or outdated and requires adjustment. It is recommended to attach photocopies of any documents that would help prove that the accusations are true.
It is critical to note that most Inquiry disputes involve guesswork as most people do not have substantive documentation evidencing fraud, identity theft, or a lending mistake. When doing this, ensure that you give as much evidence about the merits of your dispute arguments as possible. Additional information also plays a significant role in your defense if the credit bureacionales refer the matter back to the creditor.
Step 4 Try goodwill removal requests:
The lenders aren’t required to respond positively to the removal requests based on the authorized hard inquiry. If you do not have grounds that can be argued out using legal means, then a goodwill removal letter to the credit bureau or the creditor should be attempted.
Such letters kindly ask creditors to please remove accurate, authorized hard inquiries that they initiated based on grace. Frame it as mutual to a certain extent they were able to assist a customer and, at the same time, get rid of entries in their accounts.
Convey the message politely without pressurizing them to withdraw their lawful and sensible queries that arose due to the credit application. Recent inquiries that result from rate comparison when looking for the best rates are usually up to you, however, creditors may sometimes agree to delete some entries if politely requested.
Step 5 Wait after disputes:
After you have filed a dispute concerning the information in your credit reports, the agencies must complete the investigation within 30 days, barring extenuating circumstances from their end. Go on checking your credit report in the following months after you have written any disputes or goodwill letters. If there are changes, these may not necessarily occur immediately after the examination has been completed.
Is it worth paying for getting deleted?
Attempting to delete recent, valid credit checks that minimally affect your credit ratings in the first place will not help much. It is wearing off in any case after one year – and that is if it has had any positive effect at all. Only various new inquiries that negatively affect your scores should be considered for removals to maximize improvements.
To be more specific, work on the elimination of duplicates, frauds, or inquiries that are erroneous to the core rather than those that may arise out of your credit applications in the normal course. However, it is crucial to prioritize the targeting of those that are more than two years old as legally, they cannot remain on your reports in the first place.
Although being free from unwanted inquiries is helpful at some point in time, upgrading other credit factors is more crucial. Always ensure all credit obligations are paid as agreed, keep credit utilization ratios low, and ensure that the positive credit history has been for a longer time to give your scores the biggest boost. While the goal of mastering every detail of a credit history may be useful for your scores in the long run, building good financial habits is more beneficial to your scores than obsessing over the little things.
Ready to boost your credit score? Call +1 888-804-0104 now for the best credit repair services near you! Our expert team is here to help you achieve financial freedom and improve your credit. Don't wait—get started today!