Originally Posted by
pricesquire
1) Hard credit inquiries take 24-48 hours to post, so CC companies won't see you've been applying for a lot of cards recently.
I don't know if this is the case 10 years ago, but in the past year, this is completely wrong. Credit inquiry is real time. I have two data point:
- I once had a credit analyst asked me "I see that you have three other inquiries today, why's that?"
- I pulled a credit report 5 minutes after applying a card, and the inquiry is already there. There's no reason card issuer get a different report.
AOR helps the AAoA for people with thin credit file. Example:
- You have one card of 5 years (60 months). If you apply for 5 cards in the same day or same month (as long as new cards haven't report) then all 5 companies see AAoA of 5 years
- Now if you apply for 1 card every month, then in 1st month, AAoA = 60 months
- Another card in the 2nd month, AAoA = 30 months
- Then in the 3rd month, AAoA = 20.3 months (60+1+0)/3
- 4th month, AAoA = 15.75 months (60+2+1+0)/4
- And of course, analyst will ask why you have opened many cards recently.