This is a thread to brainstorm for ideas and discuss methods to profit from freezing a credit report.

I have frozen my experian report (which has 30 inqs between 6 months and 2 years old) to avoid additional hard pulls. TU and EQ have 0 hard pulls (and future pulls may be bumped off). Unfortunately, based upon where I live and most of the credit I apply for, 90% of applications result in a hard pull on EX. It is killing my credit score.

my current ideas:
1: A credit line increase is worth a hard pull on EQ or TU for me but not EX. By freezing EX, I can be sure not to incur a hard pull on that CRA when requesting a CRA. Downside: potential adverse action from the creditor?

2: A business credit AOR. Doing a business credit AOR will only result in inqs on TU and EQ. Since the credit lines don't show on my reports and the inqs can be bumped, I will be able and ready to do a personal AOR relatively soon after the business AOR with a good credit profile. Downside: minimal but maybe applying for a creditor with whom I have an existing relationship might get spooked and there might be some adverse action?

3: Bank account and brokerage account bonuses that require a hard pull are suddenly more tempting. I assume most banks/brokerage firms will try pulling another CRAs report if one is frozen. Downside: none?

I will continue to update this thread as I get new ideas and as I go through the process (I sent a certified letter yesterday to freeze my credit).

See Eugene's thread for an example of an A0R with EX frozen. He generally had success getting EX pullers to pull elsewhere.

When my wallet was lost recently I put a temporary freeze by calling Transunion, who in turned asked Experian and Equifax to also freeze my reports. How do you get Experian to not have the other CRA's reports frozen?

theman2 said:lhendricks92 said:See Eugene's thread for an example of an A0R with EX frozen. He generally had success getting EX pullers to pull elsewhere.Thanks. The B of A adverse action scares me a little... from reading that thread, I couldn't tell if it was directly related to the frozen EX report. Probably not, I think...
Here is another one that is business credit focused: Rolling Business aor with EXP (brrrrrrrr)

Only discover asked me to unfreeze EXP (in a letter) that was sent to my office. My property manager lost the letter, so I didn't even call them. But I'm sure I will get them to pull another next time I apply.

I think the lenders who pull a soft on experian (AMEX, BofA and other) will cut you off at the knees if they pull a soft on your experian for a CLI, so be careful.

Thats why I promote freezing EXP. way before you have 30+ inquires. I have 20 EXP INQs and it doesn't seem to have caused any harm but luckily I froze it before more damage was done.

Here is my plan:

Keep my EXP inqs low so I can ask for CLIs without worrying about A/A. As long as my EXP is frozen I can ask for CLI every 30 days if I want too! So even when I have 5 inqs I will not unfreeze it and let new inqs get put on it.

Very few check my TU and very few do account reviews on my EQ (I think only CITI does), 90% of account reviews are on my experian. So I must keep EXPERIAN clean for CLIs.

win333 said:theman2 said:lhendricks92 said:See Eugene's thread for an example of an A0R with EX frozen. He generally had success getting EX pullers to pull elsewhere.Thanks. The B of A adverse action scares me a little... from reading that thread, I couldn't tell if it was directly related to the frozen EX report. Probably not, I think...
Here is another one that is business credit focused: Rolling Business aor with EXP (brrrrrrrr)

Only discover asked me to unfreeze EXP (in a letter) that was sent to my office. My property manager lost the letter, so I didn't even call them. But I'm sure I will get them to pull another next time I apply.

I think the lenders who pull a soft on experian (AMEX, BofA and other) will cut you off at the knees if they pull a soft on your experian for a CLI, so be careful.

Thats why I promote freezing EXP. way before you have 30+ inquires. I have 20 EXP INQs and it doesn't seem to have caused any harm but luckily I froze it before more damage was done.

Here is my plan:

Keep my EXP inqs low so I can ask for CLIs without worrying about A/A. As long as my EXP is frozen I can ask for CLI every 30 days if I want too! So even when I have 5 inqs I will not unfreeze it and let new inqs get put on it.

Very few check my TU and very few do account reviews on my EQ (I think only CITI does), 90% of account reviews are on my experian. So I must keep EXPERIAN clean for CLIs.

can you elaborate on what you mean in the sentence in bold? are you saying that if you have lots of EXP inquiries and AMEX, BoA, etc. soft pull you for a CLI they may decrease your lines? or are you saying something completely different?

theman2 said:This is a thread to brainstorm for ideas and discuss methods to profit from freezing a credit report.

I have frozen my experian report (which has 30 inqs between 6 months and 2 years old) to avoid additional hard pulls. TU and EQ have 0 hard pulls (and future pulls may be bumped off). Unfortunately, based upon where I live and most of the credit I apply for, 90% of applications result in a hard pull on EX. It is killing my credit score.

my current ideas:
1: A credit line increase is worth a hard pull on EQ or TU for me but not EX. By freezing EX, I can be sure not to incur a hard pull on that CRA when requesting a CRA. Downside: potential adverse action from the creditor?

2: A business credit AOR. Doing a business credit AOR will only result in inqs on TU and EQ. Since the credit lines don't show on my reports and the inqs can be bumped, I will be able and ready to do a personal AOR relatively soon after the business AOR with a good credit profile. Downside: minimal but maybe applying for a creditor with whom I have an existing relationship might get spooked and there might be some adverse action?

3: Bank account and brokerage account bonuses that require a hard pull are suddenly more tempting. I assume most banks/brokerage firms will try pulling another CRAs report if one is frozen. Downside: none?

I will continue to update this thread as I get new ideas and as I go through the process (I sent a certified letter yesterday to freeze my credit).

great thread. i have a large AOR coming up and am trying to decide if an EXPBRR is in order. i will have 3 EXP inqs left when i pull the trigger. i'm figuring on about 30 apps. so if 1/3 pull EXP, i would wind up with 13 EXP inqs post AOR. on the other hand i could EXPBRR and hope that those companies that normally pull EXP pull something else, AND that in doing so it does not kill my AOR results for those companies. i'm thinking that due to the small number of EXP inqs i have currently, i should probably not freeze this time around.

nymgiants said:When you freeze your experian report, can you still pull the 3 bureau report through credit monitoring such as (AMEX credit secure), or is that blocked as well

A freeze does not STOP a consumer from performing a soft pull (sounds dirty).

clyde_frog said:win333 said:theman2 said:lhendricks92 said:See Eugene's thread for an example of an A0R with EX frozen. He generally had success getting EX pullers to pull elsewhere.Thanks. The B of A adverse action scares me a little... from reading that thread, I couldn't tell if it was directly related to the frozen EX report. Probably not, I think...
Here is another one that is business credit focused: Rolling Business aor with EXP (brrrrrrrr)

Only discover asked me to unfreeze EXP (in a letter) that was sent to my office. My property manager lost the letter, so I didn't even call them. But I'm sure I will get them to pull another next time I apply.

I think the lenders who pull a soft on experian (AMEX, BofA and other) will cut you off at the knees if they pull a soft on your experian for a CLI, so be careful.

Thats why I promote freezing EXP. way before you have 30+ inquires. I have 20 EXP INQs and it doesn't seem to have caused any harm but luckily I froze it before more damage was done.

Here is my plan:

Keep my EXP inqs low so I can ask for CLIs without worrying about A/A. As long as my EXP is frozen I can ask for CLI every 30 days if I want too! So even when I have 5 inqs I will not unfreeze it and let new inqs get put on it.

Very few check my TU and very few do account reviews on my EQ (I think only CITI does), 90% of account reviews are on my experian. So I must keep EXPERIAN clean for CLIs.

can you elaborate on what you mean in the sentence in bold? are you saying that if you have lots of EXP inquiries and AMEX, BoA, etc. soft pull you for a CLI they may decrease your lines? or are you saying something completely different?

That was supposed to say, If a creditor pulls a soft on experian and you have 30 inqs. They'll cut you off at the knees possibly. I'm not willing to take that chance.

I put my ideas for ways to use the freeze in the quick summary.
Please feel free to add any other ideas to it.

I want a long list with pros and cons so I'm ready to use and abuse my new credit freeze as soon as it is active.

Put a freeze on EX for the wife and me in December. Since the 1st of the year BOA did two hard pulls on her, both TU. Not sure if it was because of the freeze or if they changed who they pulled from. They always pulled from EX for both of us.