Dealership Listed on Cars.com Ran My Credit Without My Consent

[bscott44]

Last weekend, I was browsing vehicles on Cars.com and became “pre-qualified” through Capital One Auto Navigator. By Monday night, I had narrowed my options down to a couple of vehicles, but I hadn’t committed to anything.

On Tuesday morning, I began receiving an overwhelming number of calls and emails from various dealerships, even though I had not contacted any of them directly or responded to their outreach. Then on Wednesday morning, I received an alert that a hard inquiry had been made on my credit report through Equifax. After checking, I confirmed that one of the dealerships had run my credit without my authorization.

I made several attempts to speak with the dealership’s finance director, but I was consistently told he was with a customer. I then filed a dispute with Equifax, but today they informed me that the inquiry will remain on my credit report until 2027.

My questions are: how is a dealership legally allowed to run a hard inquiry without my explicit permission, and what steps can I take to have this removed from my credit report?

[Horseshoez]

There are many shady operators out there who hang the biggest hat then can on the smallest possible hook.  They might argue since you gave them enough information to run your credit, that was a tacit approval to do so.  The way to avoid this is to keep all three credit reports locked, you do this by logging into each of the three credit bureaus and lock your report.

[Patient957]

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@Horseshoez wrote:

There are many shady operators out there who hang the biggest hat then can on the smallest possible hook.  They might argue since you gave them enough information to run your credit, that was a tacit approval to do so.  The way to avoid this is to keep all three credit reports locked, you do this by logging into each of the three credit bureaus and lock your report.

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^ This, except you want to "freeze" your reports, not "lock."  Lock is a paid service; freeze is free.

[coldfusion]

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@bscott44 wrote:

Last weekend, I was browsing vehicles on Cars.com and became “pre-qualified” through Capital One Auto Navigator. By Monday night, I had narrowed my options down to a couple of vehicles, but I hadn’t committed to anything.

On Tuesday morning, I began receiving an overwhelming number of calls and emails from various dealerships, even though I had not contacted any of them directly or responded to their outreach. Then on Wednesday morning, I received an alert that a hard inquiry had been made on my credit report through Equifax. After checking, I confirmed that one of the dealerships had run my credit without my authorization.

I made several attempts to speak with the dealership’s finance director, but I was consistently told he was with a customer. I then filed a dispute with Equifax, but today they informed me that the inquiry will remain on my credit report until 2027.

My questions are: how is a dealership legally allowed to run a hard inquiry without my explicit permission, and what steps can I take to have this removed from my credit report?

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Next time this happens don't immediately jump to filing a dispute with the CRA.  They will only address removing inquiries themselves that are related to fraud.   

The issue here sounds like that you did not make any application for credit nor did you offer to enter into a P&S agreement, you only expressed a general interest in a vehicle.   That is probably not sufficient for the dealer to have  Permissible Purpose to hard pull your credit but whether or not it constitutes fraud is more of a grey area.  If your local police would agree that this was fraud and would create a police report for you that's something that Equifax would more seriously consider as justification to remove the inquiry.

A dealer can withdraw an inquiry if they're so inclined to follow through with the related multistep process.

A single inquiry in and of itself is not a big deal,  so you are going to have to decide for yourself how much time and energy you are willing to expend to further fight this.    If you decide you want to push further and are willing to potentially go down a deep rabbit hole (I likely wouldn't be) there are a few things you can consider doing like:

- Contact the owner of the dealership directly (or hiring an  attorney with relevant experience) to insist on a withdrawal.

- Try filing an online complaint with the CFPB (problematic right now)

- File a complaint with your state's Attorney General office.

- Contact in writing the US HQ of the relevant make/model vehicle that the dealer's actions have tarnished the brand reputation, plz fix this

[Varsity_Lu]

@bscott44 

So, they would have to have you SSN to do a hard pull, right? Did you give them that? If not, where did they obtain it? 

[cashorcharge]

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@coldfusion wrote:

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@bscott44 wrote:

Last weekend, I was browsing vehicles on Cars.com and became “pre-qualified” through Capital One Auto Navigator. By Monday night, I had narrowed my options down to a couple of vehicles, but I hadn’t committed to anything.

On Tuesday morning, I began receiving an overwhelming number of calls and emails from various dealerships, even though I had not contacted any of them directly or responded to their outreach. Then on Wednesday morning, I received an alert that a hard inquiry had been made on my credit report through Equifax. After checking, I confirmed that one of the dealerships had run my credit without my authorization.

I made several attempts to speak with the dealership’s finance director, but I was consistently told he was with a customer. I then filed a dispute with Equifax, but today they informed me that the inquiry will remain on my credit report until 2027.

My questions are: how is a dealership legally allowed to run a hard inquiry without my explicit permission, and what steps can I take to have this removed from my credit report?

---

Next time this happens don't immediately jump to filing a dispute with the CRA.  They will only address removing inquiries themselves that are related to fraud.   

The issue here sounds like that you did not make any application for credit nor did you offer to enter into a P&S agreement, you only expressed a general interest in a vehicle.   That is probably not sufficient for the dealer to have  Permissible Purpose to hard pull your credit but whether or not it constitutes fraud is more of a grey area.  If your local police would agree that this was fraud and would create a police report for you that's something that Equifax would more seriously consider as justification to remove the inquiry.

A dealer can withdraw an inquiry if they're so inclined to follow through with the related multistep process.

A single inquiry in and of itself is not a big deal,  so you are going to have to decide for yourself how much time and energy you are willing to expend to further fight this.    If you decide you want to push further and are willing to potentially go down a deep rabbit hole (I likely wouldn't be) there are a few things you can consider doing like:

- Contact the owner of the dealership directly (or hiring an  attorney with relevant experience) to insist on a withdrawal.

- Try filing an online complaint with the CFPB (problematic right now)

- File a complaint with your state's Attorney General office.

- Contact in writing the US HQ of the relevant make/model vehicle that the dealer's actions have tarnished the brand reputation, plz fix this

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I'd be curious if somewhere in the fine print with CAP 1 that it says "You are permitting us to share your info with our dealer partners for the purpose of financing and getting a price (blah blah blah)

Since Cap 1 offers a Buying Service and Financing it would not surprise me if this was the culprit...and therefore, it in fact is not fraud.

[bscott44]

I thought about that too, but this was the only dealership that ran my credit. When I spoke to the finance manager, he claimed I filled out an application on their website—but I never left Cars.com. He even read back all the info I entered into the Capital One Auto Navigator app, so it’s clear they got my details from there.

I never gave permission for a hard credit pull, so if that’s allowed through the Cap One system, that’s definitely something consumers should be warned about.