Does Buying Your Credit Report or Score Online Lower Your Credit Scores?

“John, I have heard in the past that buying a credit report, credit monitoring service or a credit score from any of the retail credit websites will hurt your credit scores. I would like to monitor my credit reports and scores but I don’t want to lower my scores. Is this true?  And if it is true, how much will my scores go down?  Seems unfair.”

Do you know what inquires are hurting your score ? Visit here to see your updated credit report and inquires now.

Not only would that be unfair but WOW, what a marketing disaster that would be if by monitoring your credit reports you were also trashing your credit scores. Can you imagine that…walking into a bank and being denied because your scores were poor because you were trying to monitor them?  Thankfully it’s not true and doesn’t happen.

None of the retail websites that sell credit scores, credit reports or credit monitoring services will cause any damage to your scores. When these companies access your credit reports to perform their services they post what’s referred to as a soft inquiry. Soft inquiries have no impact on your scores. In fact, credit scoring models don’t even see them. Lenders don’t see them either. Only you see them as the consumer.

This myth has become somewhat common because people hear that inquires will lower scores and that these services lead to inquiries. So, by putting the two things together (inquiries and score damage) the assumption is that anything that causes inquiries will lower your scores.  Not true, not even by a long shot.  First off, we’re talking about soft inquires so really this is the end of the debate. But, even if a new hard inquiry were to appear on your credit report there’s still no guarantee that it will have any negative impact on your credit scores.

It drives me crazy when I read articles suggesting that inquiries “will” or “do” lower your scores.  That’s simply not correct and suggests ignorance of the credit scoring system. Inquiries CAN lower your score, meaning it’s POSSIBLE that they can lower your scores. But there’s no guarantee that they WILL lower your scores.

Do you know what inquires are hurting your score ? Visit here to see your updated credit report and inquires now.

Credit Reporting Expert, John Ulzheimer, is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit.com, the credit blogger for Mint.com, and a Contributor for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  He is an expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit.com, John is the only recognized credit expert who actually comes from the credit industry.  Follow him on Twitter here.