Credit Pull Question

[Anonymous]

I have a question and was wondering if I can get help on getting an answer. I was inquiring about a truck at a dealership. I received a response from the dealership via text message asking about stopping by. I was heading from Ohio back to my state due to work for the weekend and told the lady it would be later that afternoon but I would like to see if I can get approved for the vehicle. I had made 4 purchases throughout the years there so they had my info on file. I had told the lady that I am looking for a bank that will only pull equifax. She told me she needed to find out from her manager and let me know. About an hour went by and she told me they have a few banks that only do equifax pulls and it would be no problem.

I told her to go ahead and see if I can get approved. About 20 min later she came back and told me everything looks good and asked when I can stop by to get my vehicle appraised. I asked her if I was approved for the truck and she stated YES. I told her the time I can be there and she asked me to get with her or my old salesman I have dealt with in the past.

I get to the dealer and my old salesman was busy with another customer. I decided to go look at the truck while I was waiting. Long story short the truck was not there and was at another one of their dealerships. No biggie really there. It was 30 min from me which would be simple enough to go look.

Salesman brought me the credit auth form for me to sign which had equifax only circled on the top like I had asked for (60 points higher on EQ than the others) so I signed it and was waiting to start the negotiations. We got everything settled on what I wanted payment wise which they were told earlier in the day and I thought was all good. Was sitting there for almost 2 hours at that point not hearing anything. Finally the salesman asked me if I could return the next day due to the banks countering everything?!? This is something I was told I was already approved for earlier that day.

Next day FICO alerts going off like crazy. Looked them up and had 1 EQ pull 7 on TU and 1 on Ex. The only EQ pull was from the dealership. I called and told the salesman and he told me he will get with the manager to let whomever know. This was 9am. Roughly 5pm I get a call from the salesman telling me the highest they could get me approved for was $30k!?!! I told him how is this possible when I was told that I had already been approved for the truck which listed for $39k?

Now I have 7 new inquiries on tu, and 1 on experian when they told me they would only deal with banks that pull EQ and NOTHING to show for it. Also wasted 4 hours at the dealership after a long trip from Ohio that day.

All communications from them were made through text, saying that I was approved as well as them only dealing with institutions that will only pull EQ. Do I have any recourse on this? It boils my blood that I went through this and I am a returning customer that got the best of service... Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[Epcot]

Wow, that's terrible getting the runaround like that. I would try to get ahold of the finance manager and talk to him about this. Unfortunately, I don't think there is much recourse. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
A good reminder that if one wants only one credit bureau pulled, about the only way to ensure that is to freeze the others.

[redshift1]

Reading your post it appears you gave tacit approval and from my experience there's no going back and undoing the inquires. Had a similar experience a few years ago

online and ended up with seven inquires.  Very annoying but lesson learned, good thing they dropped off about a year or two later and had minimal effect on my scores. Oddly enough, I purchased a car from Infinti last year and they never pulled my credit and no inquires on my credit report.

[Revelate]

Go sort your auto loan out with DCU or Penfed or one of the other copious and admittedly damned good auto lending CU's that pull EQ exclusively.

My personal opinion is virtually everyone should sort out financing before they head into the dealership, but your situation is easy to solve honestly: don't finance through the dealer in this case.

FWIW the dealer has absolutely zero control on who the lenders they submit their package to pull, and Ohio area, yeah that's old TU land from back in the day so I'm not surprised by your pull distribution.  What's done is done as there isn't any recourse in this situation from a consumer protection or legal perspective, they had permissible purpose... so if you want the truck, go sort out the financing on your own with a lender, then walk back down there and tell them no with regards to financing.

[settleordelete]

Sounds as if you were pre-approved by the dealership.

I personally take that to mean "come on in and let us play with your emotions (credit reports) for a day or two.

[Anonymous]

Just to give a quick update. I went to PenFed and applied and was approved for the full amount!! They are sending me a check today to be delivered to me by Monday =) If I didnt need or want this truck so badly I would take the check up to them, show them, then leave lol.. Thanks all for the responses and the advise of going to PenFed!!!

[settleordelete]

Congratulations on your approval. Now you've taken control of the car buying experience and they'll be worshipping ground you walk-on trying to earn your business. Good luck.

[C7LT1]

Try to remember at all auto credit pull within one day is scored as one inq and your score will recover in 3-6 months.

Congratulations on the new car.