You can dispute and remove a hard inquiry only when it landed on your report without your permission. The ones you actually signed off on, a card application or a car loan, stay put until they age off on their own. That’s the short version, and it’s worth knowing before you spend a stamp on a dispute letter you were never going to win.

Hard inquiries vs soft inquiries

A hard inquiry happens when a lender checks your credit because you asked them for something. A loan or a new card, for example. It can shave a few points off your score, and other lenders can see it on your file.

A soft inquiry is different. That’s you checking your own score, or a pre-screened offer landing in your mailbox. An employer running a background check counts too. Softs never affect your score, and they don’t show to lenders the way a hard pull does. When people ask about removing inquiries, they almost always mean the hard kind, and that’s what the rest of this section is about.

Most single hard inquiries cost you fewer than five points. The dent fades within a few months, even though the entry itself sits on your report for two years. Rate-shopped for one mortgage or one car loan and hit three lenders in the same week? The scoring models usually treat that as one inquiry rather than three, so a short burst of shopping for the same loan is nothing to worry about.

When it’s worth disputing

Pull all three reports and read the inquiry section line by line. You’re looking for a lender you don’t recognize or a pull you never agreed to, including any duplicate from the same company on the same day. Those are your candidates.

An inquiry you did authorize isn’t an error. Disputing a legitimate pull as “unauthorized” wastes your time and almost never sticks. Save your effort for the ones that genuinely don’t belong.

Removing an unauthorized inquiry, step by step

Step 1. Order your reports from all three bureaus and circle every hard inquiry you can’t explain. Write down the company name and the date next to each one.

Step 2. Send a written dispute to the bureau reporting the inquiry. Ask them to verify who authorized the pull and on what basis. You can also go straight to the company that made the inquiry and ask the same question directly.

Step 3. If neither the bureau nor the creditor can produce a signed application or proof of your permission, the inquiry has to come off. Keep copies of everything you send and note the dates you sent it.

Step 4. The bureau has about 30 days to investigate. If it comes back “verified” and you still believe it’s wrong, you can add a consumer statement to your file or escalate a complaint to the CFPB.

Most people never need more than a couple of letters.

Moved to Australia? How credit inquiries work on your new file

If you’ve relocated to Australia or come back after years abroad and now hold an Australian credit file, the ground rules shift, and it’s worth knowing how before you start posting letters.

The process starts the way the US one does: order your report and flag any inquiries you never authorized. From there, the rules are different. An inquiry stays on an Australian file for five years, not the two years quoted above. The system runs under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Credit Reporting Privacy Code, overseen by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner rather than the FCRA. The bureaus that hold the file are Equifax and Illion. If you would rather not post certified letters from the other side of the world, credit inquiry removal services based in Australia can run the dispute for you. They take it up with the bureaus and the credit provider on your behalf. Real Credit Repairers is one such firm: it reviews the file for inquiries that can be challenged and lodges disputes with Equifax and Illion under the Privacy Act. It charges only when an inquiry is actually removed, and it escalates to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority if a dispute stalls.

The same honesty test applies down here as it does back home. An inquiry you genuinely authorized, a phone contract you signed up for, or a car loan you applied for, isn’t going anywhere before its five years are up. What can be challenged is the inquiry you didn’t consent to, or one recorded incorrectly, such as a fraudulent pull from an application that wasn’t yours. If your Australian file is clean and every inquiry on it is one you made, there’s nothing to remove, and any service worth using will tell you that rather than take your money.

What you can’t remove, and why that’s fine

Legitimate hard inquiries wear off with time. In the US that’s two years; in Australia it’s five. Either way, the impact on your score is small, and it shrinks month by month, so a couple of honest inquiries sitting on your file are rarely the thing holding your credit back.

If your score is lower than you’d like, your payment history and how much of your available credit you’re using matter far more than clearing an old inquiry ever will. Fix the unauthorized pulls because they don’t belong there. Then put your energy where it actually pays off: paying on time and keeping balances down.