Credit scores not hurt by reports from credit monitoring services

Dear JCL,

Most credit monitoring services that provide unlimited access to your personal credit report do so without any impact on your credit scores. That is true of any of the services offered by Experian, including TripleAdvantage.

Before subscribing, carefully read the membership agreement information. The agreement should tell you whether or not using it will impact your credit scores through the addition of inquiries on your credit report.

Every time your credit report is accessed, an inquiry is added. An inquiry is simply a record of that access. There are two types of inquiries. One impacts credit scores, the other does not.

Inquiries resulting from your application for credit are shown to lenders when they request your credit report. Those inquiries represent potential new debt that doesn’t yet appear as an account on your report. Because they are provided to lenders, those inquiries, sometimes called “hard inquiries,” can have a slight impact on credit scores.

Because you are requesting your personal report from Experian when you use its credit monitoring services, the inquiries that are added are shown only on your personal report. The soft inquiries do not affect your credit scores. Sometimes called “soft inquiries,” these are not provided to lenders and so do not impact credit scores.

Thanks for asking.