Soft and hard credit inquiries?

Question

i am thinking of asking to increase my credit limit on some of my credit cards. Does it consider as "Soft" or "hard" inquiry. Will it affect my existing credit score?.

Answer 1

Hard inquiries are those you initiate when you request your credit report or authorize a lender or credit card company to view your credit report.

Soft inquiries are those made by credit card companies that send you pre-approved promotions for their credit card. There's a lot of speculation as to how much inquiries affect your credit score.

Soft inquiries do not affect your credit score at all. According to Fair Isaac Corporation, each hard inquiry can subtract no more than five points from a person’s score. Often no points are subtracted. Since it is normal for a consumer to shop around for interest rates when applying for a home or car loan, multiple auto or mortgage inquiries in any 14-day period are counted as just one inquiry.

For even more info, read this article:
http://financialbasics.blogspot.com/2006/11/its-your-credit-take-care-of-it.html

Have a nice day!

Answer 2

My transunion report has them listed separately with an explanation of whether or not the inquiry effects your score and how long the inquiry will remain listed on your report. Any inquiry you initiated by applying for a line of credit is a hard inquiry. Any inquiry initiated by a third party for promotional purposes (ie those credit card offers you receive in the mail) are soft inquiries.

Answer 3

Hi, Sorry to give you a maybe....
If you call to customer service and ask and they just look at your account and say we can offer you say 1k right now, then that probably does not even generate a soft inquiry. In general most inquiries with an existing company on an existing account are soft inquires.

If the company does a full credit check then it would be a hard inquiry. This would be a case where your income or credit has greatly changed and you are esentially asking to be re-decisioned by the credit department.

Since most companies have stats based credit limit assignment processes, you may already have been assigned the maximum limits. I would say if you have been past due, or are at your limits, you might be wasting your time, and you are right to ask. Inquires can have a negative impact on your credit score, if they are excessive, you have some delinquency, high utilization, limited credit history etc.

Answer 4

Any loan applications will be considered hard inquiries. For this reason, you might want to check with your existing credit cards if they will pull your credit report in order to increase your credit rating. Some banks will automatically increase your limit based on good payment history.

Answer 5

Soft hit is when you request your report or a company pulls it for a promotional purpose.


Hard hit is when you apply.


Hard hits will reduce your score

Soft hit do not.


All stay for 24 months regardless.



If you have too many, dispute them with this:

http://www.expert-credit-advice.com/Letters/Letter7.htm


Read through the rest of the site, very informative:
http://www.expert-credit-advice.com/