I have faced quite an usual situation: applied for a Citi AA Business credit card and after having to provide some additional documentation requested by Citi (NO denials and reconsideration letters etc.) was approved. When the smoke went down though I found that my Experian report has 3 consecutive hard pulls on different dates between the date of my application and the date of approval.

Has anyone had any experience successfully disputing such situations with credit bureaus (or credit card companies even though I don't think they have discretion over this once credit pulls actually occurred)? And do you think in general this is a viable battle to fight?

In the past I was twice unsuccessful in fighting with credit bureaus over improper (from my point of view) hard pulls on my credit report:
- once two such pulls appeared when my mortgage was sold from one company to the other one (needless to say without my consent or request)
- and the second time Chase applied for a credit card without my consent (call it misunderstanding - I applied for a checking account in the branch and we casually talked about credit cards but the rep assumed my supporting the conversation as my agreement to apply for one and without informing me first entered and processed an application in its system). Application was cancelled in the next hour, but it didn't prevent a hard pull from appearing on my credit report.

In both of these cases I wrote letters to Experian in nice legal language explaining what had to be correcting using quotations from explanations from Experian's own credit report. Yet both requests were rejected (actually even without explanation why or any response to my request - Experian just mailed an "updated" version of the credit report and the area supposed to list changes made in response to my correspondence was left blank).

In this particular case with three credit inquiries related to the same application I also believe that only one hard pull has to stay on my credit report, but wondering if it worth spending my time again getting into a fight.

Any advice is really appreciated.

Your creditors don't need your permission to pull your credit report.

File a complaint with the Comptroller of the Currency :

www.helpwithmybank.gov

I probably would follow you advice if my intention were to completely walk away from Citi. Butt I'm satisfied with the level of service Citi provides and intend to do business with it in the future.

And compromising (or should I say "ruining") these relationships over the matter of potentially getting two pulls off my credit report just doesn't seem a viable plan to me.

You could nicely complain to the "Office of the President" for Citibank (South Dakota) as an alternative. Tell them you want to do alot of future business with them. Don't have the address for them.

Unrelated to miles & points. Thread closed. I recommend creditboards.com.
Excellent site, and all of the answers to these questions.