? about demand letter-please advise

Christi,
First off, I think you are confusing a bit of CreditNet lingo here. You refer to a demand letter but I believe you mean validation and dispute letters. Validation letters go to the CA or OC and dispute letters go to the CRA. Around CreditNet,usually we use "demand letter" to refer to a demand sent to the CRA for procedures used in an investigation. (not criticising, just trying to help)

Second, these inquiries are a year old, and as such have a diminished effect on your score...so I would not be concentrating on them unless there is nothing worse for you to spend time and energy over. If your report is pretty clean except for these inquiries, I can understand you wanting to attack them. If not, move on to other more "influencial" items, and one's that may be easier to tackle. You can usually tell when getting your score, if "excessive inquiries for credit" is listed as a MAIN reason. After 6 months and then again about 1 year, inquiries have diminished effects on your score.

That said, if you want to try and have these inquiries removed, start by sending simple dispute letters to the CRA(s) that the inquiries appear on. You have about a 50/50 chance of them being entered into dispute. If you can get the inquiry disputes entered, my experience is that they will be deleted. As I said, getting the CRA to enter an inquiry into dispute is the tough part.

If your dispute is rejected, you will most likely get an immediate reply saying something like "Inquiries are a matter of fact" and you will have to try and send a form of the validation letter to the creditor who placed the inquiry on your report. Say something like "I have never applied for credit and I found 3 hard inquiries on my report from your company...these inquiries are damaging my credit and since they are not for a permissable purpose, you need to remove them immediately".

There is no guarantee you will get anywhere with disputes of inquiries, and therefore don't expect much.

Good Luck

-Peace, Dave

 

No you are NOT wrong. And in fact your first sentence is right on:

if a company put a hard inquiry on your credit without permissible purpose it would be illegal

It is just a bit more complex than simply demanding they pay you for violating the FDCPA or FCRA. You ARE entitled to sue, and the provisions allow you to sue for $1000 per violation. This is clearly a violation. But if you sent them a "demand" for $1000 because they put a hard inquiry on your report without your permission, why would they pay it? It is just like a someone demanding you pay them a purported debt, you need to PROVE they owe you. So how do you get that $1000?

What you would HAVE to do, is to take that creditor to court in order to establish the violations and prove your case, and then you may be awarded the $1000. In order to prove your case, you will need evidence that you tried all avenues to get the CRA and the credior to remove this "illegal" inquiry. A simple "demand" for $1000 would do you no good, they would never pay it unless sued, and even then a judge would have to determine whether you were entitled to the $1000 because of the violations.

So what you need to do is establish this proof through validation and dispute letters that request the proper action be taken if they can not prove you made this inquiry. When/if the whole process fails (meaning they fail to properly validate or remove the inquiry), you likely would have to have to bring the creditor to court to get the situation taken care of.

Hope that helps. Disputes (if you can get an inquiry dispute entered, will likely get the inquiry deleted. It is getting the inquiry dispute "ENTERED" with the CRA that is challenging.

For older inquiries (a year or more old) this may be an exercise in futility because you gain reletively little or no score increase, if in fact they do delete them...but you ARE correct in that a NON PERMISSABLE hard inquiry is a violation and you are entitled to make them prove it or remove it.

Good Luck

-Peace, Dave