How to Get Hard Inquiries Deleted in 30 Days
Aug 01, 2023
Sometimes we fall short and make bad financial decisions. The good news is that none of what you did in the past is permanent. There’s not a single credit score that can’t be fixed within one year. Follow this guide to navigate your way to a 700 credit score!
How I Removed All My Hard Inquiries
I hate it when I go to buy a car, and so many different companies run my credit. Now every time I go look at my credit report I see 10-20 hard inquiries! Has that happened to you before? I can’t stand it. And the worst part is – it looks bad to creditors when we apply for something we ACTUALLY want. However, most times this is done illegally and you can get them deleted. How? Credit bureaus have to verify all of those hard inquiries – and I promise to tell you how to make that impossible for them later on in this post.
Learn MoreHard Inquiries
Each time you apply for new credit like a new car loan, the company runs your info and it leaves a hard inquiry on your credit report. Hard inquiries alone make up 10% of our credit scores so having a lot of them on our report drags our score down a lot! In fact, you shouldn’t apply for new credit no more than 1-3 times every 6 months.
Luckily, the FCRA protects us against just anybody reporting hard inquiries against us. The FCRA, or Fair Credit Reporting Act, is a legal document that protects us from inaccurate info posted on our credit reports.
Credit reporting agencies like the three credit bureaus Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian are required by law to investigate the accurateness of EACH account on all credit reports. And they have 30 days to get this done. This basically means that the credit bureaus have to verify everything on your report to be TRUE in less than a month before they can keep it on your credit reports!
So what we’ll do is freeze our credit and make our hard inquiries impossible to verify.
I promise to break this whole process down so anyone can get this done in 30 days.
It’s important to know this: After credit bureaus receive disputes (or the formal process of claiming that a derogatory account is reported wrong), they will verify first with Sage Stream and Lexisnexis.
That brings us to our first step. Step one is to freeze your credit with Sage Stream and Lexisnexis. You can do this easily by going to SageStreamLLC.com. Once there, it will send you directly to LexisNexis afterwards.
After that’s done, you’ll go get you a copy of the 607(a) protection on the FCRA website. Save a copy of this section to send with your dispute letters. (I’ll explain where to find this later.)
Finally, we’ll send a dispute letter to all 3 credit bureaus to remove the inquiries. In your letter, make sure you put all of your personal identifiers to confirm your identity and list the account name and date the hard inquiry was put on your account. You can find all of this on your MyScoreIQ report (we’ll talk more about this later too).
Now if your social security number is frozen from the credit freeze, then nothing is going to show up when credit bureaus reach out to verify those disputes, right?
That makes it impossible for them to verify accounts from your dispute. This is how you’ll get your hard inquiries deleted in 30 days!
Before sending your letters, include a copy of the 607(a) section you saved and 3 forms of ID with your letters.
Send each letter via USPS Certified Mail. Sending it certified with a tracking number will allow you to track when they receive your dispute and give you proof if they don’t respond. Make copies of everything before you send. I’ll tell you why in a second.
After you send your dispute letters, each hard inquiry should be deleted within 30 days. If they aren’t deleted and the credit bureaus didn’t send verification of proof then file a complaint with the CFPB and include all the copies you kept. This is how you can easily get your hard inquires deleted in less than 30 days!
Now, I’ll hold up to my promise and break down each part of the process step-by-step.
Ready? Let’s go…
1. Get Your FICO Report
To start, get the most updated version of your official FICO Report to see the names and addresses of each hard inquiry on your credit report. It’s important to get a full credit report and not use Credit Karma or one of those types of credit monitoring sites because you’ll need to see all of the information reported for each credit bureau.
I always recommend using MyScoreIQ. You will get a full, detailed FICO Report with scores from all 3 bureaus Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Use my partner link and get access for only $1.
2. Freeze your credit with Sage Stream and Lexisnexis
Next, let’s freeze your credit so the credit bureaus can’t have access. Go to SageStreamLLC.com and click on Security Freeze.
This will send you directly to Lexisnexis and you can submit your credit freeze application online by clicking on Submit a Request Online in the upper right.
Now just fill in your personal information and submit your request.
3. Get a copy of law 607(a) in the FCRA
This is the not so fun part but is one of the most crucial! Go read through the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The FCRA is a long document that outlines all of the obligations and rights people have with their financial information. Here is where you’ll find the law that proves your protection.
Go to section 607(a). Save and print this section to send it with your dispute letters.
4. Create your Dispute Letters
Finally, the easy part! Now all you have to do is send your dispute letter to the credit bureaus. In the letter, make sure you list the name of each account and the date the inquiry was reported. You can find all of this at the end of your MyScoreIQ report.
In the letter, use the following dispute reason for each account:
“Section 609 states that you need to provide the application that was filled out when this account was opened. Please provide me with the documents you used to verify this hard inquiry or remove this from my report immediately.”
5. Send to all 3 Credit Bureaus via Certified Mail
Send all dispute letters by certified mail. It’s important to send letters certified so you can not only keep track of the timeliness of your dispute process, but to be able to prove that you sent correspondence to the credit bureaus and creditors.
Also make sure you send any 3 forms of ID with your letter. This stops the credit bureaus from attempting a stall tactic that will give them more time to investigate your disputes.
Here are the credit bureaus addresses to send your letters to:
Equifax
P.O. Box 740256
Atlanta, GA 30374-0256
888-548-7878
Equifax
P.O. Box 4500
Allen, TX 75013
888-397-3742
Equifax
P.O. Box 2000
Chester, PA 19016
800-916-8800
If you don’t get a response within the 30-day investigation window, you will have this proof that they received your letter but chose not to respond in the allowed timeframe. Good luck! Do you have any questions? Comment below.