Credit Inquires Part 3: Shopping Windows
One of the largest myths that a credit restoration firm has to contend with is the myth of credit inquiry shopping windows. First of all, a shopping window for inquiries allows one to shop for a certain product over a certain timeframe in the same industry with the ending result equating to one inquiry. This allows a smart consumer to look around for the best deal and not to have to contend with dozens of new inquiries.
Of course whenever there is anything that is smart on the consumer’s end the "powers to be" seem to have a different agenda. So here starts the rumor mill; how many days, weeks, or months do these "so called" shopping windows last? See, this is where the trick comes in the play. Whatever timeframe you just answered is wrong. The real question is which scoring calculation or algorithm even allows shopping windows to begin with?
Nearly all commonly used scoring models have zero allowances for shopping windows at all. In fact the shopping window rumor really took off when the FICO’s Nexgen scoring model was created in 1997, which allowed someone 45 days to shop within the same industry. Problem is nobody has heard of Nexgen because the algorithm was never adopted by the lenders, and still isn’t used today. The only shopping window scoring model that has any relevance today is the Classic 04 model, which gives you 14 days and is only one of the three algorithms used when pulling a full tri-merge credit report.
Long story short, when you’re applying for credit, your scores are going down.
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