There is a lot of confusion about soft and hard inquiries and the subject can be confusing. Some factors include credit card promotions, limit increase reviews, requesting a loan, or requesting a personal loan through your bank. These different types of inquiries have different effects on your credit report and there are some types you never want to have happen.

Hard Inquiries

These types of inquiries are requested by the consumer through a financial institution or loan generators. These financial institutions or loan grantors include: Car Dealerships, Lenders, Credit Card Companies and some Pay Day Loan Companies.

Keep in mind that these types of inquiries are requested from the consumer through another organization in hopes to obtain an unsecured loan. This means that the consumer is asking to borrow money.

If a consumer is requesting to borrow money the loan grantor will need to determine the consumers credit standing or credit worthiness. This is will generate a hard inquiry.

Soft Inquiries

These types of inquiries are also requested by the consumer but for a different purpose.

Examples would include when a consumer pulls their own credit report, when a consumer applies for car insurance or applies for a new job, when a consumer request a credit limit increase on their credit card.

Federal Law states that a consumer shall not be penalized when pulling their own credit report. This is because consumers have the right to know what’s in their credit and what items are affecting their credit score.

When you apply or inquire about some form of loan, credit card or any type of account that you may think will affect your credit, just ask. Just ask if they run a credit check, ask if they perform a hard or soft pull. Being proactive will eliminate the guess work and you will feel more confident in your own actions.

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H & I Credit Solutions

Have you heard about the OCR? No, it doesn’t stand for the Office for Civil Rights. The OCR that I’m talking about has to do with credit bureaus. The OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is used by credit reporting agencies as a way to scan dispute letters and categorize them properly. This system can be very problematic to the consumer who wants to challenge items that are reporting in their credit report.

Let’s look at what the OCR provides to the credit bureaus:

• OCR will reduce the chance for human error
• OCR may cut down on staffing cost
• OCR may be able to pull fingerprints to store in a database
• OCR can detect if a similar dispute letter has been used before
• OCR can analyze the letter and can assign an E-Oscar dispute code
• OCR can eliminate human investigation processes

As you can see from a business stand point, the OCR provides a huge benefit to the credit bureaus by allowing them to automate the dispute and investigation process. This software can even flag disputes as frivolous and has the capability to send automatic responses.

Let’s paint a picture. You’re ready to start cleaning up your credit and challenging negative items on your credit report. You purchase a DIY or dummy book on credit repair that cost you 5 or 10 dollars. You open the book and you find a letter to address those collection accounts that you have on your report. You copy the form letter just as it instructs you to do, fill out the company name, place your name on it and mail it off. Let’s say that 100,000 people used the same form letter for credit repair disputes. The OCR would immediately flag this as frivolous because of the amount of letters that are being sent that look the exact same.

A lot of credit repair companies will use similar form letters and pretty much all credit repair books will tell you to use form letters. If you use a form letter you are setting yourself up for failure before you even walk out your door and mail it. It is so important to know how to perform proper credit repair the right way. The truth is, very few credit repair companies know how to get around the OCR or even take the time to understand how it works. The result of this is, temporary results and repeat customers, if, the consumer comes back. The credit repair companies that do know the secrets will never tell you and will never share the formula they use.

There is hope; H & I Credit Solutions is doing something that has never been done before. We are exposing and unleashing the same tactics that we use to get amazing results for our clients, and putting this information directly in your hands. You can find out exactly how we beat the OCR and blast away large numbers of negative items in a very short amount of time.

You only need one resource to teach you exactly how to do it and that is our book titles “Kick Your Bad Credit to the Curb – Industry Secrets You Will Never Learn Online”.

The OCR is very tricky, with the proper understanding and knowledge, you will beat the OCR system. You will succeed and start enjoying a better life.

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H & I Credit Solutions

What are the Different Types of Bankruptcy?

Unfortunately, we as people, can fall on hard times in life. If life gets to the point where you are thinking of filing for bankruptcy, you will need to educate yourself on the different types of bankruptcy.

Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

a.k.a. liquidation, allows the consumer or business to give up nonexempt assets and walks away from most of their debts. In order to qualify, you must pass the means test. Means testing “refers generally to the eligibility for relief for debtors who have sufficient financial means to pay a portion of their debts.”[1] In short, the means test indicates that your income must be less than their state’s median income.

Chapter 9 Bankruptcy

Chapter 9 bankruptcy works just like Chapter 11 bankruptcy (next) and allows municipalities to reorganize the debt.

Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Chapter 11 bankruptcy is a reorganization of debts. This type of bankruptcy is for individuals and more commonly, businesses, to restructure debt. Like Chapter 13 (see below), it allows the filer to create a plan to repay some debt while retaining assets. Chapter 11 is more complicated, and more expensive. This makes it financially feasible mainly for businesses and very rich consumers.

Chapter 12 Bankruptcy

Chapter 12 bankruptcy allows family farmers and fishermen with regular income to reorganize debt. It’s much like chapter 13, but usually stretches out over a three year period.

Chapter 13 Bankruptcy

Chapter 13 bankruptcy is for consumers who need to restructure their debt. Some creditors will be paid back in full, while others will be paid a percentage of the debt. This type of bankruptcy also allows you to keep your assets. 

Note: If you do not qualify for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the means test, you will be recommended for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

Chapter 15 Bankruptcy

Chapter 15 bankruptcy and the model law on which it was based on is to provide effective ways for dealing with insolvency cases that involve debtors, assets, claimants, and other parties of interest involving more than one country. The general purpose of Chapter 15 bankruptcy is outlined in 5 statutes. 

• a. Promote cooperation between the United States courts and parties of interest and the courts and other competent authorities of foreign countries involved in cross-border insolvency cases.
• b. Establish greater legal certainty for trade and investment.
• c. Provide the fair and efficient administration of cross-border insolvencies that protects the interest of all creditors and other interested entities including the debtor.
• d. Afford protection and maximization of the value of the debtor’s assets.
• e. Facilitate the rescue of financially troubled businesses, thereby protecting investment and preserving employment.

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H & I Credit Solutions

Surprisingly enough, it is not illegal to have a collection removed. The collection companies, by law, have the right to report or not report as they see fit. Having said that, let’s look at what a collection company’s main concern is.

Their main concern is to collect the debt and get reimbursed for their liability. The reason your debt is a liability is because they are unsure if they will be able to collect the debt. In return, they report the debt on a consumer’s credit file. If the main goal is to collect 100% of the debt, why would they care about anything else?

Now having said all of this, you are legally required to pay your debts. However, if the collection company cannot verify this debt and provide you with full validation of the debt they are claiming, you have the legal right not to pay until this information is validated. You have an option, you can actually negotiate your full payment, and in return they remove the collection account from all of the credit reporting agencies.

Your success may vary depending on the collection company.

If you have any questions regarding this process, please ask a professional credit analyst.

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H & I Credit Solutions

Have you ever called your credit card company or visited the Big 3 reporting agencies websites? Have you noticed that they offer a service that you can pay for to make sure that no one steals your identity or to give you alerts when something has changed on your report? They offer credit monitoring. Credit monitoring from these companies is a loose loose situation because these are the same companies that report the information to the credit bureaus.

Companies report inaccurate credit information to credit bureaus all the time and then they have the nerve to offer credit monitoring services.

Are you curious yet?

That’s just like paying your car insurance company every month, and they pay someone to set you up to get into a wreck. Just so you will use the insurance and justify raising your rates. Is that fair?

Of course not, why would you pay the same people to protect your report when they are the ones assisting in the inaccurate information that is on your report?

The only way you can make sure that your report is correct, is monitor it yourself and make corrections to your report yourself. You can monitor your credit report using several different credit monitoring services. One service that is really good for credit monitoring is USAA.com. USAA has a great credit monitoring service that is super cheap and provides automatic updates when anything changes. Best of all with their credit monitoring service they provide all three credit scores. This is a huge benefit with their credit monitoring service.

Empower – Educate – Take Action

H & I Credit Solutions