HARD is when you apply for a loan/cc etc...they pull a credit report. SOFT is when the review your existing credit, and "peek" at your established credit to MAKE YOU AN OFFER OF CREDIT......SUPPOSEDLY doesn't hurt F.I.C.O.
A hard inquiry is a full version of one's credit report that is pulled by a creditor when you apply for credit from them (ex: loan, credit card, mortgage). Hard Inquiries are the one's that you must watch, because they are counted against you if you have too many of them on your credit report. A soft inquiry is pulled by a creditor to see a partial version of your credit or as said earlier, to "peek" at it. This is one of the ways you can get preapproved for an offer of credit. These supposedly don't hurt your credit rating, because a soft inquiry is only disclosed to you and not the creditors who pull hard inquiries.
If a lender sees an excessive number of inquiries in a short period of time, they don't know whether you are simply applying for cards to find the best deal or desperately seeking more credit to put yourself in debt.
They probably don't ask because many people would just say they were searching for the best rate. I know, it doesn't make sense to me why inquiries are weigheted against you; it really seems pointless to me but it's just one of those things that are done.
Where is the proof of this?Has anyone compaired the reports to see if those who have more inquires have a higher percentage of defaults.
I have been denied credit many times, had MANY INQUIRES IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, but NEVER DEFAULTED... IF THEY USED ME AS A STATISTIC...THEY WOULD BE 100% WRONG!!!
Well, I just now found out one thing. I know how to get rid of a whole lot of inquiries off of credit reports. I now know how to force the credit bureaus to take them off. I'm going to start off tomorrow proving the point to see if it actually works or not. Right now, it's just a theory backed up by an FTC opinion letter I just read. I'm going to prepare a dispute letter that should force the CRAs to take off a huge bunch of them. It won't work against credit card companies or some other financial institution type inquiries at all, but it will work in most other cases. At least I think it will, so I'm going to be the guinea pig and see what happens.
