Inquiries

Credit bureaus keep a record whenever someone views your credit history. These inquiries are made by lenders, landlords, credit card providers, service providers and insurance companies. A record of these inquiries will remain on your credit report for one to two years.

There are actually two kinds of inquiries: hard and soft. The consumer version of a credit report includes both kinds, but the version that is provided to businesses shows only hard inquiries.

Any credit application or an application to lease an apartment will usually generate a hard inquiry.

Soft inquiries include your own request for your credit report and job-related requests.

Also, CRAs often provide your contact information to companies that market to consumers with a certain type of credit history. This includes credit card issuers that send out pre-approved card offers.

Companies that have received your information for marketing purposes will show up in the soft inquiries section, but these companies have not actually seen a copy of your credit report.

Janet Rosen had a high credit rating, so she fell into a group of creditworthy consumers whose contact information was sold by the credit bureaus.

Janet received “pre-approved” offers for credit cards all the time—at least one each week. After months of these offers through her shredder, she finally decided to apply for a card from Wells Fargo, the same bank that wrote the mortgage on her house.

Janet was shocked to receive a rejection letter. As required by law, Wells Fargo stated in the letter:

• which credit bureau it had received her credit report from; and
• what item in the credit report triggered the denial of credit.

While Janet’s credit score was above 700, she did have an eight-year-old bankruptcy on her credit report. And that caused Wells Fargo to deny her application for a credit card—even though the company had been soliciting her.

If you don’t want credit bureaus to sell your name to credit card providers and other companies, you can opt out. You can do so by contacting each of the credit bureaus directly. Or you can call 888-5-OPTOUT (1.888.567.8688) to have your name removed for two years from mailing and telemarketing lists that come from the big three bureaus.

Next: Public Records