Credit report inquiry definition by Quizzle
Interaction with Quizzle's top person, Dan Gilbert
| By Greg Fisher
Dan Gilbert, Fathead, runs a Lake Erie empire that includes mortgage company Quicken Loans, the Cleveland Cavaliers big league professional basketball team, and a casino.
He also, somehow, has found the time to operate something called Quizzle. The Quizzle glossary provides definitions of words used in consumer finance (Quizzle, itself, is not defined).
One such definition is for hard inquiry, a slang term used to describe a potential item on credit reports. Its first sentence (of two): "A hard inquiry, or a hard pull, is an inquiry into the status of your credit history that does impact your credit score."
That is false, and is Myth #1. In fact, a so-called "hard" inquiry may impact a credit score. Not all inquiries affect a FICO credit score, and not all hard inquiries (as opposed to "soft") affect it, either.
Quizzle really blows it by even using the intensive word does to accentuate its verb.
Further, you won't find the word hard on certain disclosures of the contents of your file maintained by a consumer reporting agency (aka your credit report at a credit bureau). That word is street language-- credit score lore shorthand.
For instance, a recent credit report from the Equifax website (actually tradmarked "EQUIFAX CREDIT REPORT") delineates two categories of inquiries (hard and soft, respectively):
"Inquiries that may impact your credit rating" (notice the use of the word may)
and
"Inquiries that do not impact your credit rating."
(Equifax is one of the Big Three consumer reporting agencies in the United States.)