Shopping for a car loan - Inquiries hurt my credit

[Anonymous]

This is my first post here. Excited to dig in and get my credit turned around so I can get my first house! 

I was recently shopping around for a car loan and visited about 4 dealers. I did a credit app at each of them thinking this would just be four hits but I noticed that there is a wopping *hold your breath* 108 inquiries from this time period. 

I visited my friend at a Ford dealership who said "Your credit isnt quite where it needs to be to get optimal financing, and it doesnt help that I just hit your credit 34 times" Gee how lovely. 

Here is my question. On the MyFico service I use it has letters to send to Equifax, Experian and Transunion that ask for the inquiry to be taken off. Is this worth a shot? 

I know it will be 50+ letters to each agency. I was planning on including a personal statement saying I authorized one credit pull and not 30+ at each dealership. I was able to see how much each inquiry lowers my credit. 

The bank I am trying to get a mortgage through said the inquiries are hurting me tremendously. 

[Anonymous]

I hope someone can chime in to this. I was wondering,are you able to document to us for the purpose of information, how on average each credit inquiry in blocks of 10's did have an effect on your credit score. How strong is your file?
This just to help pple with the debate on inquiries and scores and to see if the scores improve with time or after a month as pple say. Thanks

[Anonymous]

Not sure I can offer insight into whether the letters can help .... 

But this is why you shouldn't just "shop around" and let a dealer pull your credit. That dealer works with NUMEROUS lenders, for many reasons, including some who will finance people with less than perfect or even bad credit. Each one of those lenders will do a pull on your credit. 

Crazy, but true. 

When you're ready to buy a vehicle, check your credit first, try to find a lender who will work with you BEFORE they pull your credit. Unless you have perfect or close to perfect credit, I'd never let a dealer "shop" me around as a potential borrower to his stable of lenders

[Anonymous]

You gave the dealer to check your credit which means they check with various lenders. The inquiries are going to stay. Since they are within a 2 week period, they count as 1 inquiry.

[Anonymous]

You can write letter if you want to try it, but do not get your hopes up.

Credit inquiries are generated by the action of a lender requesting your credit report for purposes of offering you new credit or checking on your information.

"Soft" ones are done by lenders or others checking your file for monitoring (people you already have accounts with do this) or for preapproving you/marketing (people you did not specifically ask to check you out - no application from you), confirm identity (employers and leasing agents, mostly), or for people pulling it for you (credit sites like myFICO, Credit Karma, etc).  These have no scoring impact whatsoever.

"Hard" ones are done by lenders checking your file because you have requested a loan/credit card from them.  When you sign an applicaiton, you give permission for this.  These are the ones that do have a scoring impact, and that do alert other lenders/lookers that you are pursuing credit.

The collection of pulls you incurred during your shopping spree are the "hard" kind, but if they are coded correctly by the initiating lender, they all will bear the "auto lending"designation.  As such, their collective scoring impact will be ONE.  All of them will appear on your report for up to two years, but the scoring effect will be as if you only had one inquiry, not 108, and will end after 12 months.  The fact that so many were run but you did not close a loan, however, is going to be both visible and obvious to underwriters for the next year or so, until they start falling off.  

Since the inquiry is reported once the report is pulled by the inquiring lender, it is proper for the CRAs to list them all.  In some rare cases, you can get them to delete various ones, but they are under no obligation to do so - they are required by law to report accurately whatever information they are given.  On the brighter side, many times these "shotgun" lenders - the ones who participate in the dealers' storm of shopping a deal to find a lender - will drop their inquiries, especially if they were never interested in funding the deal in the first place, and so some of your collection may just fall off on its own in the coming cycle or two.  

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

This is my first post here. Excited to dig in and get my credit turned around so I can get my first house! 

I was recently shopping around for a car loan and visited about 4 dealers. I did a credit app at each of them thinking this would just be four hits but I noticed that there is a wopping *hold your breath* 108 inquiries from this time period. 

I visited my friend at a Ford dealership who said "Your credit isnt quite where it needs to be to get optimal financing, and it doesnt help that I just hit your credit 34 times" Gee how lovely. 

Here is my question. On the MyFico service I use it has letters to send to Equifax, Experian and Transunion that ask for the inquiry to be taken off. Is this worth a shot? 

I know it will be 50+ letters to each agency. I was planning on including a personal statement saying I authorized one credit pull and not 30+ at each dealership. I was able to see how much each inquiry lowers my credit. 

The bank I am trying to get a mortgage through said the inquiries are hurting me tremendously. 

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The banker tht told you that is likely incorrect. As long as the inquiries are coded correctly as automotive, then they WILL be scored by FICO as a single inquiry, no matter how many there are.

As for them "hurting tremendously" inquiries are only something like 10% of your scores. Balances and payment history, OTOH combine for 65% of your scores. Worrying about inquiries when you have damaged credit is a bit like worrying about flea bites when alligators are chewing on your legs.

[greent]

I think the inquiries will stay.