First of all I’ll explain what inquiries are.

Simply put an inquiry means that someone looked inside your credit report. Your credit report is used by creditors and lenders to decide whether or not they will grant you credit. Also they are used by insurance companies to decide whether or not they will cover you with an insurance policy. Clearly they will take a look at your credit report, an inquiry, in order to come to a decision.

Credit reports are used by landlords if you submit an application to rent an apartment or house. They require your social security information, birth date and other information in order to check your credit report and your credit rating or FICO score and this, again, is an inquiry.

At the same time having too many inquiries can be negative, because it could mean that you are attempting to get more credit than you can handle.

So How Do You Delete Inquiries On A Credit Report?

Watch out for any unauthorized inquiries because thieves may have requested credit in your name. They may be pretending they’re a legitimate business or company that has a legal right to access your credit report. You can easily get these removed by simply writing a letter with documentation and an explanation.

You also need to know that there are two kinds of inquiries. There are “soft” inquiries and “hard” inquiries. “Soft” inquiries will not affect your FICO score. It’s only viewed by you and does not impact your credit score. When you request a copy of your credit report you will be noted as an inquiry, a “soft” inquiry. Any of the creditors you have now can take a look at your credit report during your association with them and these are also “soft” inquiries.

“Hard” inquiries do affect your credit report and FICO score. When you apply for credit whether it’s for credit cards or an auto loan for example, this will reflect on your credit score. Lenders are concerned that you have too much outstanding credit now and only so much income. They want to make sure that you can pay back.

These inquiries will expire naturally in two years. You may not be able to remove them before that if they’re correct. If there are any inquiries that you have not authorized, you can get them deleted by writing a letter to the credit bureaus or credit reporting agencies that listed them.

There is however one exception: if you have two inquiries from the same source you may be able to get them merged so that one is deleted.

Lastly you need to know that inquiries that have been on your credit report for more than six months are usually not taken into account when creditors or lenders consider granting credit or loans. This should get some problems off your shoulders.

This is pretty much everything you need to know about credit report inquiries, what they are and how to remove them from your credit report. Keep following our site for more information on credit reports and related topics.

Let’s get right to it shall we?

1) Beware Of Debts & Credit You Don’t Use

Just as it is very easy to apply for a store credit card, it is also easy to forget you have it. It is  important to remember that the account will stay on your report and have an impact on your score as long as it is open. Avoid having credit lines and  cards you won’t use. It will make you look more risky from a lenders point of view. Stick only with the accounts you use on a daily basis and consider closing your  other accounts. This way it will make it easier for you to follow  your debts and will increase the chances of you having a good credit score. Don’t  forget that when you close an account, the record of  the closed account remains on your credit report and can affect your credit score for some time. Actually, closing unused credit accounts may cause your credit score to drop in the short-term, as  you will have higher credit balances spread out over a smaller overall credit account base.

2) Avoid Having A Lot Of Credit Report Inquiries

An inquiry is noted every time someone looks at your credit report. Don’t make the mistake of allowing too  many inquiries on your credit report, as it may may seem that you have been rejected by  multiple lenders. Which means that you should be aware of who looks at it. You can  reduce the number of inquiries on your account by approaching lenders you have  already researched and are interested in doing business with.

3) Don’t Think That You Only Have One Credit Report

A lot of people mistakenly talk about having a “credit score” when in reality credit  reports often include three or more credit scores. There are three major credit bureaus in the United States  that develop credit reports and calculate credit scores, and also a number of smaller credit  bureau companies. When looking to improve your credit report, you should not  concentrate just on one number. You should contact the three major credit bureaus and work on improving  all three credit scores.

4) Having No Loans & No Debt Will Not Improve Your Credit Report

Some of us make the mistake of believing that owing no money, having no credit cards, and  avoiding the whole world of credit will help increase the score on their credit report. When in fact, the opposite is true. Lenders want to know about your past ability to manage  credit, and the only way they can figure it out is by the score on your credit report. Having no credit at  all can actually be worse for your credit score than having a few credit accounts that you pay off on time. If  you currently have no credit accounts at all, opening a low balance credit card can actually increase  your credit score.

5) Never Do Anything Illegal To Repair Your Credit Report

It seems pretty obvious, but plenty of people make the mistake of lying about their credit score or  worse, falsifying their loan applications because they are ashamed of a bad score. Not only is this  illegal, but it is also completely ineffective at repairing your credit report. Your credit score is easy to check  and, not only will you not fool lenders by lying on your credit report, but you may actually face legal action as  a result of your dishonesty.

As you do a search for credit report repair or navigate through the forums that are popular with consumer advocates and credit repair specialists and you will likely find more than a few contributors who claim that fixing your credit reports is a simple process. According to them, all that is required, is a copy of your credit reports, and you to compose a dispute letter to the credit bureaus pleading your case, and after 30 days the offending items on your reports are gone. Your credit score is instantly better and you can make all of the purchases you want

The truth is that credit report repair is not as easy as many people claim. But think about it this way if credit repair were so easy, why would the federal government create legislation to preserve the integrity of the companies offering credit report repair services instead of just banning the practice altogether?

Why the Credit Bureaus Make Credit Repair Difficult

To Understand why credit repair is not easy and why the process has to be regulated takes a little understanding of the economics driving the bureaus; the main three of which are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. To start, credit bureaus are not government entities. They are for profit corporations that make money by collecting your personal information and selling it to interested parties. They are regulated by laws created to oversee credit reporting agencies but the agencies are not created as a result of legislation. Actually, if it weren’t for the fact that they are required by law to investigate consumer disputes, the credit bureaus wouldn’t even bother with the practice in the first place. For the bureaus, credit report repair is a drain on resources with zero return on investment.

This is exactly why the bureaus do not want to make it easy for you to repair your credit but even more than that, no one other than yourself wants to remove errors from your credit report. You are not the primary client of the credit bureaus and until the bureaus began selling credit reports directly to consumers the credit bureaus could not profit from you at all, makes sense?.

How Credit Bureaus Manage to Make Credit Repair Difficult

Knowing why the credit bureaus make credit repair difficult the question is how? Simple, by using the same laws that have been enacted to allow consumers to dispute negative items in their credit reports. Credit report legislation states that consumers are able to dispute any items on their credit reports that they feel are inaccurate, unverifiable, or misleading. These vaguely defined terms make it possible to dispute a lot of items on credit reports.

To counter the vague parameters provided to the individual consumers, the credit bureaus were also provided with even more abstract rules. According to the legislation, the bureaus are required to investigate consumer disputes unless they feel the disputes are “frivolous or irrelevant”, and they take full advantage of this leeway. The bureaus set up “gatekeepers” who accept all consumer disputes and decide which disputes warrant an investigation, and since these gatekeepers work for the credit bureaus, they are clearly biased towards their employers and against you. Getting past the gatekeepers becomes the largest hurdle in credit report repair and frequently devolves into a trial and error process of writing letters, waiting, fielding rejections or stall letters, and starting all over again.

Easy Credit Report Repair

Credit report repair can still be an easy process from your perspective; it just requires a simpler allocation of resources. Instead of spending resources in the form of time and effort, you can spend a little money to have an expert repair your credit for you. This way, you will end up with the job done, faster, without any worries. Professional credit report repair is easy. You simply have to get your credit reports, provide them to a credit repair agency, select which items on your report you want to dispute and let them to manage the process from there.