Hard Inquiries
Unauthorized Hard Inquiries
A hard inquiry is a record that someone pulled your credit for a lending decision. Anyone who pulled it without a permissible purpose, or without your authorization, should not be on your report at all.
Hard inquiries are the smallest of the negative marks and the most often misunderstood. Checking your own credit is a soft pull and does nothing to your score, no matter how often you do it. Shopping for a mortgage or an auto loan within a short window is deliberately treated as one event by the scoring models, so comparing lenders is not the problem people fear. What does not belong on your report is an inquiry from a company that had no permissible purpose to pull you, and those show up more than you would think, particularly after a dealership visit or a data breach.
This is probably you if…
- You see inquiries from companies you have never done business with
- One application generated several inquiries you did not expect
- A dealership or lender shopped your file to many banks without telling you
- Inquiries appeared around the time of suspected identity theft
- You have a mortgage or auto loan coming and want the file clean first
What we actually do about it
- 1Inventory every hard inquiry across all three reports and match each to something you actually did
- 2Separate hard inquiries from soft pulls, which nobody but you can see and which never affect your score
- 3Challenge unauthorized inquiries with the bureaus and demand permissible purpose from the puller
- 4Flag inquiry clusters that suggest identity theft and coordinate the wider response
- 5Time your applications so legitimate rate shopping is scored as a single event
The honest part
Inquiries are worth a few points each, and clearing them is not going to transform a damaged file. We include inquiry work because it is cheap to do alongside everything else and because a cluster of unexplained inquiries is often the first visible sign of identity theft. If inquiries are the only thing on your report, we will tell you honestly that you probably do not need to hire anyone.
Common questions
Before you hire anyone
You can dispute credit report errors yourself for free, get your reports weekly at AnnualCreditReport.com, and cancel any credit repair contract within three business days. No company can lawfully remove accurate information or charge you before performing the work.
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Answer library
Related quick answers
Short, checkable answers on the items that show up next to this one.
How long do negative items stay on a credit report?
Most negative information reports for seven years. Chapter 7 bankruptcy is the exception at ten years from the filing date, and hard inquiries are visible for two years with about twelve months of score impact. For collections, charge-offs, repossessions, and foreclosures, the seven years runs from the date of first delinquency on the original account, not from the date of the event.
Full reporting-window tableDoes paying a collection remove it from my credit report?
Usually not. Paying typically updates the account to a zero balance and a paid status, but it can continue reporting for seven years from the original delinquency. FICO 9, FICO 10, and VantageScore 3 and 4 disregard paid collections, but many lenders still use older FICO versions that do not. In some states, paying can also restart the statute of limitations on the debt.
What actually removes a collectionWhat is re-aging and why does it matter?
Re-aging is when a collection agency reports a date of first delinquency later than the true one, making an old debt appear recent and extending how long it can legally report. It violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act and it is common when debts are sold between agencies. Comparing the date of first delinquency across all three credit reports is how you catch it.
What does a charge-off mean on a credit report?
A charge-off means the lender wrote the balance off its own books for accounting purposes, typically after about 180 days of non-payment. You still owe the debt and the account keeps reporting. Its seven-year reporting window runs from the date of first delinquency, not from the charge-off date, and lenders sometimes report it the other way, which extends the item improperly.
Was medical debt removed from credit reports?
Not by federal rule. The CFPB rule that would have removed medical debt was vacated nationwide by a federal court in July 2025 and is not in effect. What still applies are the credit bureaus' voluntary policies: paid medical collections are removed at any amount, unpaid medical collections under $500 are not reported, and no medical collection can appear until one year after it goes to collections.
Medical collections, stated accuratelyCan a bankruptcy be removed from my credit report early?
Not if it is accurately reported. Chapter 7 reports for ten years from the filing date and Chapter 13 for seven. What is frequently wrong and worth correcting is the reporting on the individual accounts included in the filing, which should show a zero balance and an included-in-bankruptcy status but often still show balances owed or post-petition late payments.
Find out what is actually on your credit reports.
A free review of all three, with a straight answer about what is challengeable and what is not. Nothing due, and no obligation.