How many times can a company pull my credit report in a period of time?

Question

I am a few days away to have a consultation with a bankruptcy attorney to file for bankruptcy due to bills that I incurred while being sick and being unable to pay off. I tried working with the direct agencies to pay the balance down slowly but they refuse to work with me, thus my reason for filing for bankruptcy. Now it looks like a collection agency has started to "contact me". I checked my home phone where I live with family and there was a message from someone who didnt identify there were attempting to collecting a debt and they didn't leave the message for me, they left it for the entire family ("This message is for the XXX Family") I traced the number back to a collection agency. I thought it was illegal not to identify you were collecting a debt etc. but over the past two days I've had two requests for my credit report by the collection agency. Is that illegal? Is there a limited number of requests an agency can have? 2 requests in 2 days is excessive and hurts my credit score

Answer 1

Different types of credit inquiries are for different purposes and show up differently for credit scoring purposes. Collections and bankruptcy will hurt your credit score much more than an inquiry.

As far as the phone message, it would be worse if the phone message was specific, possibly revealing your private financial information to family members. Your mother, for example, has no right to this information.

Answer 2

You're gonna file bankruptcy and you are worried a credit inquiry will degrade your credit score?!?!??!?

Don't worry about the credit score. The bankruptcy will take care of that! After the bankruptcy it won't matter much.