@Anonymous wrote:I bought two cars in the same year, both with preapprovals from Capital One. I told both dealerships I had my own financing and they were only authorized to run the credit CO required them to pull. One followed it, the other sent my file to like 15 banks. It was insane. That dealership lost a customer forever. Sorry it happened to you too!
It doesn't matter how many times they run your credit, it all counts as 1.
Personally I will always arrange financing I'm happy with ahead of going into a dealership (well I may not go into a dealership ever again but different story) and then let the dealer with their lenders try to beat it.
Same true with new construction on the home side, preapproval I can live with, and then see about the builder lenders who often have rebates and other tricks (not all of these wind up being legit but anyway).
Ultimately more inquiries = more chances for you to get the best deal possible, and since they score as 1 when done close together (rate shopping), /shrug. Inquiries get a bad rap on this forum, yeah they're problematic when you're doing credit card apps sure but mortgages, autos, and even student loans, you're *supposed* to do your due diligence by shopping around and therefore supposed to take a bunch of inquiries.
