therivler1 said:FinanceFan said:I will make the change so he contribute. Sorry, haven't checked the thread for a while.
What do you think about changing the title to something more general, like "Knock inquiries off your credit report with bumpage. Experiences wanted"

The title would still have the b* word. I thought that was the main problem. Any other thoughts?

I did a mini-AOR about 3 weeks ago. I had recently had to switch jobs and the resulting cash flow disruption caused me to be 2 days late on a card payment. Actually I went into Bank of America and paid on the due date but they didn't post it for 2 days. This caused my 0% to go to 18.24% and doubled my payment amount. Dang! Anyway, I got the balance transferred to new accounts with other lenders and back to 0% for another year.

Started with 4 CC's, $47k total CL. Now have 19 CC's, $117k CL. My TU score went from 804 to 698. The inquiries are still posting 3 weeks later and the scores are still dropping. I'm updating the 3 scores daily (+ 1 minute) more or less with TrueCredit. I'm curious though that when their new inquiries post does it reset my bumping?

About a year from now I want to apply for a mortgage and may have to roll remaining balance to another 0% if possible. I'll keep bumping the inquiries. Any other tips to get the scores back up?

Do I need an American Express card for that? In all of the above I ended up with zero AMEX cards. Probably because I requested a $25k balance transfer on my AMEX applications and they got nervous.

This post details how inquiries initiated by you, the consumer, are coded on the complete reports from the 3 CRAs.

I. MONITORING PROGRAMS First, let's enumerate the programs we know of:

1. TrueCredit.com (the official true credit)
2. AMEX Credit Secure
3. Privacy Matters
4. Natl City Identity
5. KeyBank PrivacyMatters
6. Chase Identity Protection.
7. There are a huge number of other programs as well, but these may not give you daily pulls or if they give you daily pulls, they only do so for one credit agency. These programs include: PrivacyGuard.com, City Ident Protect, identityguard.com (costco affiliate), etc, etc.

First thing to remember: except for AMEX Credit Secure, all the others are versions of the TransUnion / TrueLink program. However, they don't all report the same on the actual reports of the 3 CRAs.

II. HOW TO CHECK YOUR FULL / ACTUAL / COMPLETE REPORTS When you obtain your credit file through the above programs, you will only see the so-called hard-inquiries. You will not see account review (AR), promotional (PM or PRM), DTC, ND, etc, and your own pulls. In order to see your own pulls and all the other info, you must request an complete, actual report from each of the CRAs.

Here is how you do that. File an online dispute. You can initiate a dispute with EX and TU using the TrueCredit program, possibly other programs too. However, this is not the only route. However, this is not the only way to do so. You might want to try this link for TU: http://www.transunion.com/corporate/personal/creditDisputes.page if you already have a transunion.com username (same as your TrueCredit userid / pwd).

1. For TU, you can get a dispute-style complete actual report of your credit once every 30 days,
2. For EX, you can get this any time you want, as long as you have already done that once. When you do it the first time, record the report number and save it. From then on, you can go to www.experian.com/dispute,
3. For EQFX, I don't know of an easy way. But if you must do this, you can pay for a service called Equifax Credit Watch Gold, and be able to pull your EQ file once a day (don't overuse this, because this might split your file - I don't know whether this is an urban legend that parents tell their kids before they go to bed or what, but apparently collective wisdom is - don't overuse that).

III. HOW MONITORING PROGRAM PULLS APPEAR ON FULL REPORTSIf you are using a number of the programs in section I, then this is what you should see in your actual reports, when you obtain them using the approach described in section II:

1. On your actual Transunion report:

FIRSTNAME MI LAST NAME via TRUELINK, INC. - real TrueCredit.com
FIRSTNAME MI LAST NAME via TRUELINK/CHASE ID THEFT - Chase Identity Protect
FIRSTNAME MI LAST NAME via TRUELINK/NAT CTY ID PRT - National City Identiy Protect
CONSUMERINFO via CONSUMER INFO.COM - AMEX Credit Secure
FICO SCORE & TU REPORT - myFICO.com or related (REAL FICO score)
CONSUMER INFO.COM - possibly AMEX Credit Secure alert
TRUELINK, INC - alert agent associated with TrueCredit.com or similar
TRUELINK/CHASE ID THEFT - alert agent associated with Chase Identity Protect
INTERSECTIONS, INC - identity guard
DIRECT TO CONSUMER VIA INTERSECTIONS, INC - identity guard
FACTACT FREE DISCLOSURE - this is your once-a-year charity gift from the CRAs
PRIVACYGUARD VIA CONSUMERINFO.COM - privacyguard.com

2. On your Experian dispute report, this is what you will see:

TRANSUNION INTERACTIVE - TrueCredit.com, Chase IP, KeyBank PrivacyMat (all three are coded the same).
AMEX/CIC CREDIT RPT - credit secure
TRUELINK - any true link alerts
TrueCredit/PRIVACY MATTE - privacy matters
TrueCredit/NATL CITY IDE - natl city identity protection
CIC/TRILEGIANT - privacyguard.com
INTERSECTIONS INC - identityguard.com
CIC/EXPERIAN and variations - site that resells EXPERIAN, e.g. CreditExpert, freecreditreport
myFICO CONSUMER SERVICES - myFICO.com or related

3. On your Equifax actual report, this is what you will see:

CIC/EXPERIAN RPTS - for AMEX Credit Secure
TrueCredit/CHASE - Chase IP
TRUELINK - TrueCredit.com, also alerts (possibly also KeyBank PrivacyMatters)
TrueCredit/VERTRUE - Natl Citi IP,
INTERSECTIONS - identityguard.com
Q-SPACE - privacyguard.com

Don't know: PrivacyMatters, and more. If someone could get this, it would be awesome.

Also, it appears that privacyguard.com has a sister site called mycreditkeeper.com, which allows monthly subscription. The soft-pulls generated by both programs are coded the same on the actual reports.

So looking at the results, I think - but I am not sure - subscribing to TrueCredit.com and KeyBank programs together might not bring any addtl. benefit.

IV. RECOMMENDATIONS DEPENDING ON YOUR NEEDS

I would suggest the following mix of products depending on your desired results:

1. Simple plain old monitoring, one service is enough: pick NatlCity or KeyBank ($10 and $9 each), and as an added bonus, you and a spouse can get it for $14.95 a month. Programs are not so sophisticated, scores are crap, alerts might not work fully, but you can pull a fresh report every 24 hrs. The scores and monitoring are available from transunion only, i.e. this is not 3-bureau monitoring,

2. Monitoring in over-drive, aka distinct daily pulls, aka parallel b* (cheapest option for each desired result).

I should pre-face this with the following: we don't know for sure if pulling your credit using multiple services makes b* any faster - we simply have a good reason to believe so, given the design flaws because of which b* works.

Update (August 12, 2007). By pulling using 4 services (TrueCredit, Natl City Id Protect, KeyBank Privacy Matters, and Credit Secure), I was able to wipe 2 TU inquiries in about 20 days. Compare this with a situation when I was pulling using 1 or 2 programs only - it took 45 days to get the first inquiry off.

- if willing to pay for only one svc, get Natl City OR KeyBank,
- for two, Natl City *AND* KeyBank,
- for three, Natl City, KeyBank, *AND* CreditSecure,
- for four, Natl City, KeyBank, CreditSecure, *AND* Chase,
- base on the information available to me at the time, I see no way to generate 5 distinct pulls a day on EQ (but possible on TU. You might be able to do 6 on TU).

Tthe reason I recommend CreditSecure before Chase is to have a different program, e.g. when TrueCredit is very slooooooooooow due to overload and technical issues, and you really need to get a report, you can try Credit Secure. Also, if you don't mind the extra cost, you can throw in Credit Secure before the KeyBank - personal preference.

If you want to b* AND be able to lock your transunion file, substitue KeyBank with TrueCredit.

Signing up for both Natl Citi ID Protect and KeyBank Privacy Matters might not work, if you use the same name, address, e-mail, and credit card (thanks to therivler1 for reminding me about this ), because these two programs are serviced by the same company behind the scenes. Creative ways to by-pass this restriction is to have one spouse sign up for one program as a member, and another spouse sign up for the other. If you use your creativity, you can even sign up for both if you don't have a spouse.

My 2 cents.

I think an appropriate slogan for TRUELINK based services will be: "TRUELINK: where you pay us to b* for you".

great summary, ChumChurum, thanks!.

In the NatCity thread, in this post, you mention that the only way to do NatCity and KeyBank at the same time is to sign up for each one under a different spouses name.
- if willing to pay for only one svc, get Natl City OR KeyBank,
- for two, Natl City *AND* KeyBank,
- for three, Natl City, KeyBank, *AND* CreditSecure,
- for four, Natl City, KeyBank, CreditSecure, *AND* Chase,
This won't work for someone who is single, or who does not need to drag their spouse into b*. I just wanted to make this clear for anyone reading this thread.

dreamer4ever88 said:so if i'm single the suggestions for b* won't work for me?
thanks
Use can use NatCity OR keyBank, Credit Secure and Chase.

Has anyone had this problem?

When clicking the Experian Online Dispute link in Credit Secure I get this system error message after validating my address with Experian

Error

We are unable to allow access to our online dispute service. We understand that the privacy and security of your information is important to you; therefore, we cannot provide a specific reason as to why we cannot allow access. Our registration process is designed to ensure that your credit information is released only to you. Please call 1 866 851 6901 for assistance.

Could it be that I used the "dispute" link 30x in a row?

I tried calling but it's impossible to get a liver person.

Can a FWF mod sticky this thread? Its very useful.

Multiple credit monitoring b* has worked for me in speeding b*, i.e. the calendar time it took from the day the hard inquiry was recorded to the day it disappeared. My data:

TU: 2 experiments

1. In my initial b* efforts, I was able to get a TU inquiry from May 7 and May 14 b* off in about 40-45 days (I believe the first one was in about 45 days, june 20th or so). I was probably using mostly 1, and then 2 services, during that time,

2. In my second b* efforts, I was able to get two TU inquiry from July 19th b* off today, August 7th. That's 18 days! I have been using 3 different services during most of that time, and 4 during part of that time, so you figure, there were 18*3 + 10 = 64 or so inquiries.

So initial effort: 45 days with about 1.5 services,
Later effort: 18 days with about 3.5 services.

Notice that what matters is: 18 * 3.5 about equals 45 * 1.5, i.e. around 67. However, don't assume that you need 67 inquiries to get your first b*. Some inquiries (e.g. AR or PROM) do / might have a priority and do not get bumped off. So the more of this you have, the better.

In my observation a single pull can get rid of more than one TU hard inquiry. This suggests that the TU database stores inquiries in blocks of many (not sure how many). When a new inquiry creates a capacity problem, an existing block gets evicted from memory. This block can host 0, 1, or more hard inquiries. If you did an AOR and had many TU hard inquiries in rapid succession, chances are very good that a number of them, and possibly all of them, will get b* of in one shot.

In addition, the inquiries are grouped. Very old AR (account review inquiries) do not get b* off even though relatively recent hard inquiries go. I don't have a mortgage so I don't know how mortgage inquiries are affected.

EQ: several experiments

For EQ, one new inquiry replaces the *oldest* inquiry. So there is no block structure similar to TUs. However, there may be a priority structure. In particular, I have seen some older inquiries survive even though more recent hard inquiries are gone.

EQ has a capacity of around 100 for those reports that I have seen. Each new soft pull displaces exactly one other pull once the capacity has reached. This happens in a strict FIFO (first in - first out) order in a given priority group.

In other words, you will never see more than 1 EQ hard inquiry disappear after 1 soft pull. Of course, if you are pulling using 4-5 programs daily, you might see 4 or 5 hard disappear in one day, one per soft pull done in that day. This in fact is very likely if your hard pulls were a result of rapid-fire AOR applications.

I just found this more recent post from CC which I think is worth quoting in this thread:
ChumChurum said:I also did some tests (pull actual report, check how soft pull is recorded):

1. On Experian,

- KeyBank program is coded as: TrueCredit/COVERDELL MY
- Natl city program is coded: TrueCredit/COVERDELL MY

2. On Equifax,

- KeyBank program is coded as: TrueCredit/VERTRUE
- Natl city program is coded: TrueCredit/VERTRUE
This means that there is no longer any additional advantage of keeping both KeyBank and Natl City.