Lindsay VanSomeren is a personal finance writer based out of Kirkland, Washington. Her work has appeared on Business Insider, Credit Karma, LendingTree, and more.
Lindsay VanSomeren ContributorLindsay VanSomeren is a personal finance writer based out of Kirkland, Washington. Her work has appeared on Business Insider, Credit Karma, LendingTree, and more.
Written By Lindsay VanSomeren ContributorLindsay VanSomeren is a personal finance writer based out of Kirkland, Washington. Her work has appeared on Business Insider, Credit Karma, LendingTree, and more.
Lindsay VanSomeren ContributorLindsay VanSomeren is a personal finance writer based out of Kirkland, Washington. Her work has appeared on Business Insider, Credit Karma, LendingTree, and more.
Contributor Jordan Tarver Lead Editor, Mortgages & LoansJordan Tarver has spent seven years covering mortgage, personal loan and business loan content for leading financial publications such as Forbes Advisor. He blends knowledge from his bachelor's degree in business finance, his experience as a top perf.
Jordan Tarver Lead Editor, Mortgages & LoansJordan Tarver has spent seven years covering mortgage, personal loan and business loan content for leading financial publications such as Forbes Advisor. He blends knowledge from his bachelor's degree in business finance, his experience as a top perf.
Written By Jordan Tarver Lead Editor, Mortgages & LoansJordan Tarver has spent seven years covering mortgage, personal loan and business loan content for leading financial publications such as Forbes Advisor. He blends knowledge from his bachelor's degree in business finance, his experience as a top perf.
Jordan Tarver Lead Editor, Mortgages & LoansJordan Tarver has spent seven years covering mortgage, personal loan and business loan content for leading financial publications such as Forbes Advisor. He blends knowledge from his bachelor's degree in business finance, his experience as a top perf.
Lead Editor, Mortgages & LoansUpdated: Aug 17, 2021, 8:06am
Editorial Note: We earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Advisor. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations.
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While hard inquiries only have a small negative impact on your credit score, it’s still crucial to pay attention to these changes if you’re trying to build your credit, especially if they’re errors. Credit reporting mistakes happen and removing inaccurate hard inquiries from your report can help you keep your credit in tip-top shape.
We will walk you through why it’s important to remove inquiries from our report and how to do it.
Experian can help raise your FICO® Score based on bill payment like your phone, utilities and popular streaming services. Results may vary. See site for more details.
A hard inquiry occurs when someone you’re planning on doing business with, such as a lender, checks your credit report. They do this to understand the risk you pose as a potential borrower and how you’ve managed past debt obligations.
Hard inquiries can ding your credit score by up to five points. While they stay on your credit report for two years, they only impact your score for one.
You may also be familiar with soft inquiries, which have zero impact on your credit score. Soft inquiries typically happen when you check your credit or when a lender or credit card provider sends you preapproval offers in the mail.
If you spot a hard credit inquiry on your credit report and it’s legitimate (i.e., you knew you were applying for credit), there’s nothing you can do to remove it besides wait. It won’t impact your score after 12 months and will fall off your credit report after two years.
However, if you spot a hard credit inquiry you don’t recognize, it’s vital to remove it. There are a few reasons for this. First, it means that you’re being unfairly penalized for that error, even if it only has a small impact. Second, it could be a sign of fraud, so it’s important to investigate it further and to get it removed.
While removing an item from your credit report is not as simple as checking your email, it’s not as difficult as it might sound. Here’s how you can dispute inaccurate inquiries and iron out your credit.
The first step is to get your credit reports from each of the three credit bureaus—Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Often, the same information is recorded on all three, but not always, and that’s why it’s important to check all three.
You can typically pull your credit reports for free once per year on AnnualCreditReport.com. However, due to Covid-19, you can order free weekly credit reports until April 20, 2022.
Once you’ve received your credit report, there will be a section for “Hard Inquiries.” You’ll want to scan over the entire report to make sure it’s accurate, but pay close attention to the inquiry section. If there are any hard inquiries listed here, make sure that you recognize them.
It’s important to note that sometimes the company listed that made the inquiry doesn’t match exactly with who you did business with. This often happens if a retailer partners with a bank to manage its credit card program.
For example, while you may have thought you were applying for a card with Victoria’s Secret or Sportsman’s Warehouse, you may have a credit inquiry from Comenity Bank, which manages the credit cards for these two retailers. Thus, you may have to do a bit of Google sleuthing to make sure an inquiry is legitimate.
Inaccurate hard inquiries could happen for two reasons.
First, if you were shopping around for a new service, the provider may have checked your credit report without you realizing it. For example, if you’re shopping around for a new cell phone carrier and the company did a hard credit check against your knowledge or approval, that could be grounds for submitting a dispute.
Second, if you find an inquiry that you don’t recognize at all, it could be an honest mistake, or it could be a sign of fraud. It’s important to reach out to the company listed to check. If it is a fraudulent inquiry, it may be a good idea to set up a credit freeze or even a fraud alert.
In either case, you’ll want to dispute inquiries that aren’t legitimate with each bureau and report that lists them.
After the company does an investigation, it should remove the inquiry. If for some reason it doesn’t, it will send you an explanation.
It’s a good idea to check your credit score at least once per quarter and your credit report once per year to check for errors. Free credit report websites can be a handy source to notify you about any new inquiries on your report. Signing up with one of these sites can help you receive any new updates about your credit reports in real-time.
Experian can help raise your FICO® Score based on bill payment like your phone, utilities and popular streaming services. Results may vary. See site for more details.