Credit Report Disputing

I need to address several aspects of your question.

Hard pull vs. soft pull

You said you were told your credit was negatively affected by having three lenders access it within a short time frame. That is likely true, but the damage may not be very significant, in terms of the number of points that your credit score dropped.

When a potential creditor accesses your credit, it is called a "hard pull" or "hard inquiry." These inquiries are made after you voluntarily give your permission to someone to access your credit report, like the car dealer, a mortgage lender, or a credit card firm. A "soft pull" or "soft inquiry" is when the inquiry is involuntary, made without your explicit permission. Examples of soft pulls are when a creditor pulls your credit to pre-approve you for a credit card, when a creditor is attempting to verify information you provided them, or when you are pulling your own credit.

It is true a number of hard pulls within a short time lowers your score. It may not be fair, but the scoring criteria figure that a person who is aggressively shopping for credit is likely to access that credit and thereby increase his indebtedness. The more one shops around, the greater the negative effects. Fortunately, the negative effects from excessive hard pulls are temporary. After a few months, your score will rebound especially if you have active, current accounts open.

In your case, have you looked at your report, to see where your score is now and compare it to where it was before?

There are some steps you can take, but there is no guarantee they will be effective. How much of an effect there was on your score may well dictate how much effort you want to take to try and right this wrong.

Contact the creditor who made the error

You can take two approaches to addressing the unauthorized credit pulls. You can contact the lenders that pulled your credit without your permission or you can contact the credit bureaus (or both). In contacting the creditors, you want to request that they contact the three credit bureaus directly and instruct them to remove the unauthorized inquiry from your credit report. Inform the lenders that you never gave permission to have them access your credit and that the dealer did so without your consent. Include in your letter a reference to Section 1681b(c) of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This section covers transactions not initiated by the consumer. Make your letter direct and polite.

Contact the credit bureaus

The other route to go is to can contact the three bureaus directly. The three bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, each have forms available at their websites for disputing information on your credit report. The three major consumer credit report companies also offer consumers the ability to dispute a credit listing online. See Experian's Disputing Credit Report Errors, TransUnion's Credit Disputes, and Equifax Online Dispute Web pages. Follow the instructions they give.

Separately, because of the effort required for the steps above compared to the chances of success, it may make more sense to focus on other ways that you can improve your credit score. There are several steps you can take to help improve your credit rating, but building and maintaining a good credit score requires diligent effort and a long-term commitment to financially sound living. Bills.com has a great article about understanding your credit score, for you to learn more.

I hope this information helps you Find. Learn & Save.

Best,

Bill

Bills.com