I see that there are a lot of posters concerned about removing inquiries from exp. Although inq accoutn for maybe 10% of your score. There is a way to remove them; I did it just 2 months ago. All you have to do is put a initial 90 day fraud alert on your exp credit report. Once you do this exp will atomatically contact the other bureau to add the fraud alert. then contact exp's fraud department and dispute the inquiries. sometimes it's done within a week sometimes they will be the entire 30 days. BE aware that if you dispute an inq that is attached to a TL there is a possibilty that you could loose the TL. Good luck. It does work. once the investigation is done you can contact exp to have the fa removed. they will instruct you on how to do this. The only way to remove a fa is via snail mail.
And what's the downside of placing a fraud alert? Will this affect any credit applications before the FA is removed? I have 11 fairly recent inquiries on EX I'd love to remove, but I'll be closing on a house in 2-3 months, so I don't want the FA to screw up the mortgage...
I contacted the fraud dept via phone. They asked me what items on my cr I wanted to dispute. I gave them 8 of the 11 inq on my cr. didn't give them 2 of them because they are active tl's. Right after I got off the phone with them I check my exp cr via back door and all the inq's I disputed were highlighted.
When you call to add the fa the csr will ask you for a number to be contacted at for a potential creditor to call you to verify that you are the person applying for credit. The initial fraud alert is for 90. Have you already gotten your mortgage? If there are mortgage inq on your cr they will ask you "have you been shopping for a mortgage". You have to deside if you feel comfortable saying "no" just to have them removed. It took about 2 weeks before they removed my hard inq, so I can't honestly say if they did a "real" investigation. I believe they do as they do with everything else they investigate, they try to make the disputed information to an active tl.
Once you put the FA on your cr, I would give it at least 2 hours before you call exp again to dispute the inq's. Also, you will not be able to update with TC..........until you call them to verify your identity. They will release the block and you can resume your daily updates.
Nevermind about the telephone number. All you have to do is contact Experian's regular customer service number and ask them to transfer you to the fraud department. Since I already had a 90 day fraud alert on my report, I thought I'd give it a try. I successfully managed to initiate a dispute with 5 inquiries on my report that are not tied to any tradelines. The rep asked me if I contacted any of the creditors who pulled the hards to let them know about the fraud. I told her no. She suggested I contact them so that they won't verify the hard inquiries as a result of the disputes. I said ok. lol. I wonder if they actually do contact the creditors. We all know that Equifax claims they contact the creditors, but they actually just delete the inquiries right away.
