In trying to bump off the inquiries on my second AOR it got me to thinking that we do not really have a good centralized thread on bumping and results that was mathematically focused. I see a lot of threads that are vague but not any that are exact.
The quick definition of bumping is pulling your credit report on Equifax and trans union through a reporting service to have the hard inquiries fall off.
On my first AOR (8/17/07) I used:
National City Identity Protect: $8.95/mo (24 hour pulls)
Privacy Matters 123:$29/yr (24 hour pulls)
TrueCredit: $14.99/mo (24 hour pulls)
I did not have an exact amount of pulls before the falls but it took about 2 months to see results. It seemed to work like clockwork at what people had posted with about 60 pulls for transunion and 90 pulls for Equifax. All of my pulls were done through a transunion based service. I just pulled like a mad man until the inquiries fell off not really keeping track of exact numbers.
On my second AOR (10/17/07) I used (am using):
National City Identity Protect: $8.95/mo (24 hour pulls)
Equifax Gold: free because of stolen corporate data (24 hour pulls, you can see the soft pulls but the service does not add a soft pull)
American Express Credit Secure (Experian based): $11.99/mo (24 hour pulls after 30 day free trial)
I have just started to see bumpage on my Equifax report (not transunion just Equifax more on that later), from the Equifax Gold service I can see the following pulls on the day before the bumps started occurring (yesterday):
13 hard pulls dated on the AOR or after
=================
10 Soft pulls from American Express Credit Secure
61 Soft Pulls from National City Identity Protect
14 Soft Pulls from Miscellaneous Sources (4 were dated before the AOR)
Total of 98 pulls (85 soft) I figured I would see the other soft pulls that were older than the AOR fall off before I saw any bumpage. I was wrong.
I pulled the two reports today (then I pull the Equifax Gold to see that the soft inq's hit) and learned a lot about the system.
On my first pull, it showed 13 inq's and on my second pull it showed 12 inq's. Equifax Gold showed 11 INQ's which leads me to believe that the request happens before the soft pull is logged. IE You pull the report then it adds the soft inquiry and bumpage occurs.
My totals today were:
11 hard pulls dated on the AOR or after
=================
11 Soft pulls from American Express Credit Secure
62 Soft Pulls from National City Identity Protect
14 Soft Pulls from Miscellaneous Sources (4 were dated before the AOR)
Total of 98 pulls (87 soft). I will also point out that the soft pulls before the AOR are from various sources (Equifax, National City, CitiMortgage). It almost seems like the stack gives preference to soft pulls. I will have to verify in a week or so.
Getting back to how the Equifax Gold service works. On every update (remember pulling Equifax only) it refreshes the date of the soft pull "ND-Equifax Consumer Services" but not adding another one to the stack. This service is obviously garbage for trying to bump (but hey I got it free because of a stolen laptop from somewhere so who cares) but you can see the soft pulls.
This got me to thinking now that I have not had any bumpage from Transunion (and Transunion is supposed to be easier and quicker) so I wonder if in the last couple of months they have updated their system to do the same sort of "refresh" on all of their cobranded services (maybe a result of you FW bumpers and black list people 
). On my last AOR, the transunion bumps happened first, why not now?
Using the "dispute" method listed below in this thread I pulled my TU report with the soft pulls. I counted the following:
Hard Inq's
4 (dated October)
1 for employment ( before AOR dated)
*** NC Identity protect has always reported 4 which means either employment check hard pulls are not reported or NC has some sort of filter.
Soft Inquiries
Promotional Inq's:
1 From Capital One
Account Review Inq's
11 From Credit Secure ** match in number to the EQ pulls
62 NC identity protect ** match in number to the EQ pulls
6 NC Identity Protect that are in a different format (without name). I have no idea where these came from
17 Miscelaneous pulls
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97 Soft pulls (5 hard) and no bumpage...
Is TU still bumpable? Has anyone bumped any TransUnion Inq's in the last month or so?
Update 1-16-08:
After missing my normal 2 pulls yesterday (first time in 16 days), I pulled this morning and on the first pull all 4 TU inquiries are gone. With my count from last week this gives me a total of 102 known pulls, pull 103 is unknown if bumpage occured. Pull 104, all 4 hard Inq's are gone! It appears that TU is still bumpable but the stack size is definitely bigger than the 98 on EQ.
Update 3-31-08:
It appears that EQ chopped their credit file on or around the end of February eliminating multiple soft pulls from the same service. I have witinessed this as my soft pulls now total 25. The 25 includes 7 pulls that are dated on or after 2-29-08
