Auto Loans and Shifty lenders

[wrw0010]

I have been in the market for an auto loan and so I have put in a lot of apps in the last few days making sure to keep all this activity to a 14 day period (I know it is supposed to be 30 days but I'm playing it safe).

Today I get this from a lender:

We have received your application from the online auto lending company you applied with.
I will call you within 6-24 hours.  We look forward to assisting you with your automotive
financing needs.  Feel free to contact us at your convenience.

It is very important that you don't apply anywhere else because we want to be able to get
you the best interest rate that we can based on your credit score. Remember, if you keep
applying for an automobile loan, your credit score will continue to drop and we will not
be able get you the best interest rate that you deserve.

Is this a bunch of hooey or have I screwed up my score by apping so much over the last few days?

[Anonymous]

I had a similar experience, I had gone to a dealer who proceeded to shop me around to six different underwriters.  Ridiculous, I was caught completely unawares.

As far as impact, I still get chicken skin every time I see all of those inquiries (six months before they completely fall off), but at the end of the day I did get approved.

May I recommend saving the inquiries?  Pull your own report, take it to some credit unions and see if they'll work with your history.  If they're willing to put together a good rate, give them the go-ahead to pull a hard inquiry (I think they all require their own in this day and age), and as long as the info matches your report, you should get the same rates promised.  I did that last week and went from a 14.5% (so much for that dealer shopping the 'best' rate, huh?) to 7.5%, and with only one hard inquiry.

Good luck...

[Anonymous]

I don't like the idea of them telling you NOT to go else where etc... Bad practice - so I would not go with them just because of that but in a way they are looking out for you because to many inquires within the 30 days will lower you score= higher % I had a reply within minutes with Capital one for a auto loan and they called within ten min. with details(nice)

[wrw0010]

MyFICO says this on the website:

    Looking for a mortgage or an auto loan may cause multiple lenders to request your credit report, even though youre only looking for one loan. To compensate for this, the score ignores all mortgage and auto inquiries made in the 30 days prior to scoring. So if you find a loan within 30 days, the inquiries won't affect your score while you're rate shopping. In addition, the score looks on your credit report for auto or mortgage inquiries older than 30 days. If it finds some, it counts all those inquiries that fall in a typical shopping period as just one inquiry when determining your score. For FICO scores calculated from older versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 14 day span. For FICO scores calculated from the newest versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 45 day span. Each lender chooses which version of the FICO scoring formula it wants the credit reporting agency to use to calculate your FICO score.

Are there people whom this has not worked properly for? By that I mean has anyone gotten popped on their score for multiple inquiries even though they happened within the 30 day period?