Credit Inquiries

Credit inquiries are items on a credit report that shows that a business with a permissible purpose has previously requested a copy of the credit report.

Any time you apply for a mortgage, auto loan, or line of credit, you authorize your lender to request a copy of your credit report to determine whether you are eligible for credit. These types of inquiries, prompted by your own actions, appear on your credit report and affect your FICO score. These are also, what are referred to as a 'permissible' or allowed credit inquiry.

Credit inquiries that do not count toward your FICO include your own credit report requests, credit checks made by businesses to offer you goods or services, or inquiries made by businesses with which you already have a credit account. One example of this is the satellite company, DirecTV. Credit inquiry complaints have been made by many consumers regarding unauthorized credit inquiries. There are ways to remove credit inquiries from your credit. Always double check the inquiries first to make sure if they were authorized by you or not. Many do not realize this, but it is a good idea to check your credit regularly to ensure that the reports are accurate. This is a part of good credit management. This will help to improve your FICO score over time. Your FICO score is not affected when you check your credit. If you want to remove inquiries from your credit report, you can send a letter to remove inquiries from credit report to the company that inquired. As part of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a company cannot make an unauthorized inquiry on someone's credit report. They are required by law to remove inquiries from your credit if you request it.

If a company will not remove inquiries from a credit report, you can first ask for proof of your authorization. If they cannot provide that and refuse to remove the inquiry, you can threaten to contact the State Banking Commission. This is usually enough to get them to remove the inquiry. If not, follow through with your threat. Always, keep track of all communication between you and the company.

Mortgage credit inquiries are understandable to lenders if they all fall within a certain period such as 30 days. They know that you are just rate shopping and this won't affect your FICO score as much as numerous inquiries over a long period of time.