Two hard checks for a single car lease?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

My wife and i recently leased a new vehicle.   I recieved notifications from credit monitoring service regarding two new hard checks that were showing up on my credit report.  It turns out the two checks were from the dealer i leased the car with and their financing arm.   The dealer used a 3rd party named CredCO, while the lease itself is with a financing institution that also pulled my credit (as i would expect them to).   I called the dealer and asked what happened here and they told me it is standard procedure.  They also told me the financing institution in this case was a completely separate company.  I informed them that it was ok if they had done a soft check if they needed verify information, but only the financing institution should have performed a hard check.  I asked that they initiate a request to have their hard check removed, but they keep telling there is nothing they can do and that it is standard procedure.

Was this an illegal credit pull by the dealer?  Is this standard procedure?  How can i go about getting one of these hard checks removed?

Thanks.

[cdtotten]

Pulling twice is actually standard practice. Most of the time, the dealer will pull your credit to see how easily you can be financed and who through, then the actual lender will pull to verify your creditworthyness. Nothing illegal about it - it's actually abnormal to have less than 2 pulls.

[Anonymous]

Ok thanks.  It sucks that it counts as two hard checks however.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Ok thanks.  It sucks that it counts as two hard checks however.

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Unfortunately it is the cost of doing business

[Lel]

Assuming that both credit checks were coded as auto loan inquiries, then they are scored as a single inquiry by the FICO scoring models.

I recommend ceasing any efforts to remove or alter the inquiries on your credit report.  If it ends up as a disputed inquiry, it could lead to fraud alerts slapped across all your credit reports.  Having open disputes also can interfere with future applications for credit.  Inquiries from both the dealership and the finanacing arm is standard practice (it happened to me two years ago).  The effect on the inquiries will decay over time and then be eliminated completely in one year.