Credit Inquiries, having too many can affect your score.

In credit repair, you need to understand credit inquiries. These have an affect on your credit score.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) outlines specifically who can see your credit profile. Companies must have a "legitimate business need," and a "permissible purpose," as stated in the federal law to obtain your credit file. Since you want to control the number of credit inquiries into your file, do not just allow everyone to pull your credit score.

With the exception of the above, only you, and only those who you give “written permission,” can access your credit files. Your neighbors, friends, co-workers, and even your family members cannot have access to your credit profile unless you authorize it.

Be careful who you give written permission to access your credit file. My husband had a client who had given permission to a used car dealership to check his credit. This caused his application for a mortgage to be denied.

How could that happen?

Unfortunately, the used car dealership ran credit inquiries every week for several months to see if his credit had improved. This appeared as several hard inquiries on his credit report. He hadn’t given the used car dealership written permission for these several credit inquiries! Yet the used car dealership took that one signature and used it several times.

This disqualified him for a mortgage because he had too many hard inquiries. It had lowered his score dramatically. Be sure to check your inquiries on your credit report.

Some examples of those who can access your credit files are:

Credit Grantors

Collection Agencies

Insurance Companies

Employers

A business that receives a copy of your credit profile will be listed under the "Inquiry" section of your report. An "inquiry" is a listing of the name of a credit grantor or authorized user who has accessed your credit file. If you haven’t given permission to any of these to access your credit report, send a Remove Creditor Inquiry Letter to the credit bureau. A sample of one is included in the dispute letters.

Credit grantors, such as credit card companies, post an inquiry before offering you a pre-approved credit card application. These are listed as "promotional" inquiries on your credit file because only your name and address were accessed, not your credit history information. So that is not a hard inquiry and you don’t need to be as concerned.

These inquiries are NOT sent to credit grantors or companies for reasons of credit reporting. They are only listed for your informational purposes. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is the federal law regulating credit reporting companies like Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It has been in effect since 1971 and undergoes periodic revisions by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”). This law protects consumers’ rights such as the right to review and contest information in their credit profiles. So, it is a good thing. Especially since you want to use this law for credit repair. It also specifically defines who can access the information in a credit profile, and the way you are notified of this activity.

For more information on credit inquiries and how to do credit repair click here.