http://forums.dansdeals.com/index.php?topic=7467.msg1604259#msg1604259 http://forums.dansdeals.com/index.php?topic=7467.msg1604014#msg1604014
Just read these and tell me what you think
1st of all, thank you for the links, as there was truly 0 chance i was going to reread this thread
.
I do think that the statue itself listed in first link doesn't clearly address the issue, at least to an inexperienced layman like me, as it doesnt clarify what would be a valid reason for "account review" or the frequency with which such reviews can occur. Though i'm sure there are sub-statues or precedence that likely address these questions. I'm assuming that late / missed payment would for sure be one of those reasons. Also, i'm sure there is other info dictating when hard / soft pulls can be used, and in my personal experience only soft pulls are used for account maintenance, but again its not clear from quoted text.
the lawsuit link seems more promising, and i agree that the general sense of the article does seem to be that financial institutions can't just hard pull when they want to, but based on below text, it sounded to me that the situation here wasn't banks pulling credit on existing customers as part of an account review process, but rather hard pulling prospective clients even though they haven't fully finalized the loan application, even after promising to soft pull them. Again, i'm by no means a lawyer, so maybe i'm just mis-interpreting the text.
((The settlement class includes anyone on whom SoFi ran a “hard” credit inquiry between Nov. 20, 2013, and Aug. 13, 2014, in connection with a student loan refinancing or a personal loan who never finished the process of funded a loan nor uploading the documentation. The class action began with a complaint in November 2014 from consumer Shawn Heaton saying that SoFi falsely represented to prospective borrowers that it ran soft credit inquiries that wouldn’t affect a credit score, violating the FCRA and California’s Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act and Unfair Competition Law))
Just to be clear, although i'm of the opinion that banks can't just hard pull your credit (based on my personal experience and anecdotal evidence gathered from credit departments) and the fact that they just don't do it is good enough for me. Thus i do believe that a specific legal reason does exist, but don't think it has been presented in this thread yet.