CREDIT INQUIRY DISPUTE

Credit inquiries will not necessarily tank your credit score, but they can lower it by more than a few points if you are not careful. 

A credit inquiry removal letter is used to alert the credit bureaus of an unauthorized inquiry and request that it be removed. Upon receipt, it is the credit bureaus duty to investigate your claim with the information provider and decide about whether it should remain or be deleted from your credit report.

While inquiries do not have a major impact on your credit score, damage could result if too many appear in a short window of time. That is why it’s important to have unauthorized inquiries removed as your report should only reflect what is accurate.

Before sending a credit inquiry dispute letter, make sure you have frozen your credit file with the four-specialty consumer credit reporting agencies; especially SageStream. Most credit inquiries are verified by the SageStream database. 

Hard credit inquiries sit on your report for 24 months. However, they are only factored into the FICO scoring model for 12 months, which means your score will no longer be impacted after this time period.

Look at your credit report to determine if this dispute is worth tackling, especially if the disputes are older than 12 months.