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Was thinking about helping my niece purchase a car and apped thru cap one auto just to get an idea, but will most likely just go thru my local CU. Didnt really even think about it after, but today I get something saying they pulled a Auto score Experian, and it was 645. Now , I have my subscription here and my lowest of any auto version is TU 4 at 714/ What the heck is going on.
I would call Cap One (that's who "they" is, right?) next week, between 10 am and 3 pm Eastern and ask to speak with a loan officer. It's important to speak to an LO rather than just a run of the mill rep. See if they can tell you what scoring model was used and ask them if they can confirm it was run on Experian data.
There's also the possibility that your scores on Experian have taken a pronounced dive recently due to something bad appearing on your report. (A derog of some kind, say, or something else.) If that had happened you would not necessarily find out about from myFICO until the next time all your scores were run.
A score of 645 is indicitive of a derogatory on file. Have you had any accounts in dispute? Accounts in dispute are not included in scoring. Once a dispute has been concluded a negative, if still present, will start counting again (e.g. late or collection). As CGID mentions sometimes an old derogatory can reappear. This can happen with collections turned over to a 3rd party which then reports it to the CRA(s).
Do you have access to a tool that will give you your Experian report frequently? Depending on what myFICO product you have, your last report could have been a long time ago.
I suggest you enroll at creditscore.com -- which will give you an EX report (and a FICO 8 score) for free every month. You can pair that with Credit Karma which gives you your TU and EQ reports as often as once a week.
Given what you describe, I'd be very interested in seeing my inquiries at all three reports (especially EX) for the last 60 days. Those tools will show you that.
So your Experian report would have two auto scores, FICO 2 and FICO 8. Are they both higher or is one more in line with what CO reported? Do you bank with CapitalOne in any way, currently? (Credit Card, etc.) If so, they might re-used file data from the last time they SP'd you instead of pulling fresh.