Last week I got an alert from Credit Karma that there was a hard inquiry on my credit. It came from Citibank for a Dillards Credit Card which I never applied for.
Pretty soon I got a text followed by a call from the "Dillards Fraud Department" asking if I was the one who made a $500 charge. It was clearly bullshit and I hung up
I froze my credit and did a fraud alert on the inquiry. The following was the result of the dispute on Equifax
"This inquiry remains on your Equifax credit report. Inquiries are a factual matter of record. Please contact the creditor if you have questions about this inquiry."
I contacted CitiBank and oddly was told there was no credit application under my name or SSN which makes this even more confusing.
Advice on how to proceed?
Equifax denied my dispute on a credit inquiry I never initiated
byu/m5726 inCreditCards
Posted by m5726
1 Comment
Reach out to the Citi EO and tell them that there’s an unauthorized hard inquiry on your EQ report. They can soft pull your EQ report and look. They’ll see the hard inquiry present and have already told you “there was no credit application under your name” which should make it super simple for them to remove. The EO will probably delegate the task off to their credit bureau division which you can explain everything to.
As an aside, your credit reports should be frozen at all times as standard practice. That should be your default state, where they are only thawed prior to applying for credit. Being reactive like you were (waiting for an issue and *then* freezing your reports) only leaves you open to headaches like this.