Soft Inquiry

You get a soft inquiry on your credit report. This type of inquiry is not supposed to effect any credit score and only you can see it. These types on inquires are created when an existing account checks your credit, when a promotional offer is made, or when you check your own credit.

 

Maybe I am misunderstanding the question but I think that a soft inquiry is only shown to you. The CRs always say that when you apply for credit no one sees them. As far as affecting scores, they shouldn't but this seems to be controversial. It would be unfair if they did affect your score b/c you have no control over acct reviews and those seem to be the majority of them.

OR- you might be asking what does someone get when they pull your report using a soft inq.

I am under the impression that they receive the same report as those pulling a hard if it is for AR. For the PRMs I don't know what they receive, it is supposed to be less info but enough to let them decide if they want to extend credit to you. Maybe you can get scores only if that is the company's preferred method when pulling a soft but I think that they can get a score only when pulling a hard too.

For example, when I asked Macy's for a CL increase, they pulled a hard but the few seconds that the rep had me on hold probably wouldn't be enough time to review my report. My guess is that she looked at a score. Just a guess though...

 

I think that when a creditor pulls a soft they can see the entire report if they want to. I think this because sometimes a person's APR is made higher b/c of their performance on OTHER accts on their report. Say for example Discover does a soft AR and then ups your interest rate, even though you have a good record with them, then the info must be from looking at other accts on your report. The creditor probably can choose to look at only the score if they want to as well.

My understanding is that the difference in the hard vs. soft is the way the company CODES the inq.

 

I agree with MandyB. I misunderstood your original question.

With credit card promotions for example, when you get a pre-approved credit card offer, chances are that the credit card company had a credit card bureau give a list of credit card users to the credit card company that fit certain criteria. This would have created a soft inquiry. If you apply for the card, the credit card company will pull your full credit report and create a hard inquiry. Even though you were pre-approved, you could be turned down for credit. This is supposed to be illegal but has happened. This is why you will rarely see anyone with a bankruptcy get a pre-approved credit card offer for a good card.

One of the slick ways that credit card companies are getting around the law is to send out an offer that says up to $100,000 credit at as little as 0% for 6 months and as low as 9.99% interest after that. In reality, to get the $100,000 at 9.99% you need a Beacon score of 805 and an income greater than %75,000 a year.

 

That's a whole other question. When they say can't my personal opinion is won't. But I have herd of people disputing or threatening to sue and getting inquiries either removed entirely or turned from hard to soft.

Is there a particular type of dispute you are thinking of?

 

Yep. I agree with the "won't" not "can't" theory. It is possible that their software automatically codes inquiries as hard ones and that's their default setting.

 

Maybe I am too cynical but I believe that they just say that and it has nothing to do w/ what info they can receive through a soft. They just don't care how it affects your report. Just my opinion tho...

 

I you are talking about an existing creditor of yours, they should not be creating hard inquiries. They can see your full credit report from creating a soft inquiry.

In general, for an account that is already on your credit report, any inquiry that is created in reference to that existing account number, whether open or closed, must be a soft inquiry.

 

Erik, can you PLEASE explain that to EX and TU for me? They don't seem to understand this concept. And the acct holders are not helpful either.

 

I would hope that Inquiries from existing creditors are being reported correctly. On Trans Union and Experian soft inquires are reported in a separate section. On an Equifax report the following abbreviations represent credit report inquires that do not count against you on your Equifax credit report. These are also known as soft inquires:

PRM (promotional)

AM or AR (review of existing credit account)

EQUIFAX, ACIS AND UPDATE (you are ether asking for a copy of you credit report or a investigation of an item).

 

I was joking when I posted that b/c I have been arguing w/ EX and TU re some inqs on my rpts that are "hard" but the accts have been estabished since '99 and '91. They won't budge for me in removing them.

 

Mandy

So they are creating hard inquiries on existing accounts?

 

Yes. Just one each for each acct. The other inqs. for the same accts are soft.

 

Mandy

Not to be nit-picky but when the account was created there should have been one hard inquiry. After that an existing account should never create a hard inquiry.

I perhaps this why you have one hard inquiry for each account?

 

Back when the accts were opened in '99 and '91 there probably were hard inqs. Don't know about '91 for sure but when I saw a '00 rpt I had a zillion hards. These new hards are from this year on long established accts.