“Hard inquiry” refers to a credit pull initiated by you, and it does affect your credit score. If you are curious about your credit score, you might find out that a hard inquiry might drop you credit score 5~7 points. If you have many hard inquiries in a short time period, your application for a new credit might get rejected even if you still maintain your credit score at a relatively high level. The reason is very simple, you are requesting too many credits from credit issuers such as banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions. However, “soft inquiries” will never affect your credit scoring. Because soft inquires are invisible to credit grantors. (Hard Pull and Soft Pull)

Usually hard inquires will disappear from your credit report in about 25 months in all three credit report agencies (TransUnion, Experian, Equifax). But do you want to bump off those notorious hard inquiries from your credit report earlier than 25 months? If you want to knock hard inquiries off of your credit report, there is a very easy way. I personally was able to get rid of all of hard inquiries on my credit report at TransUnion and Equifax. I applied for many credit cards in last August: Blue from American Express, Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express, Citi CashReturns Card, Discover Open Road Card, BOA Rewards American Express Card, CapitalOne No Hassle Cash Card etc. There are more than 12 hard inquires on my TransUnion and Equifax credit reports. However, right now, there is no hard inquiry on my TransUnion and Equifax credit reports!

The method is popularly named as “bumpage”—the process of pulling your personal credit report repeatedly in a short time period (usually 1 pull per 1 or 2 days or several times per week). In this way, you can generate a lot of soft inquiries on your credit report and eventually knock hard inquiries off of your credit report. The reason why you can bump off hard inquiries is credit report agencies have only limited space to store your personal information. If you throw in much new information in their system, they tend to delete older information. (Note: only works for inquiries.) However, “Bumpage” only works for TransUnion and Equifax.

How can you generate soft inquiries? There are many credit services on the market which allow you to pull your credit report in a daily manner. The most famous one is TrueCredit.Com and other credit services from TrueCredit but under other names (e.g. NationalCity Identity Protect). If you have an American Express card, you can choose CreditSecure from American Express. My “Know Your Credit Score” post have summarized some credit services on the market for your reference. However, there are many free ways to pull soft inquiries for you. For example, the pre-determination process from HSBC and BOA can generate a soft inquiry on your credit report every time you check for a credit card offer from them. The credit limit increase button in your online account at American Express can also generate a soft inquiry for you for free!

If you use only one credit service and pull your credit report daily, it will takes you about 2 months to start bump your hard inquiries. If you use multiple credit services at the same time, the bumpage process can be accelerated.

However, you might get rejected by TrueCredit or other credit service providers due to your excessive access to your credit report! But it’ highly YMMV.

Important update: This trick is not working for TransUnion now. Some one reported that the bumped inquiries came back on their credit reports again.