After lurking and posting in these forums for over a year now, I took my knowledge on a little car shopping trip this past weekend. From everything I understood on these forums, when auto dealers pull your credit (1) Yes it's a hard pull and (2) no matter how many inq you get in 14 days from car dealers, they only count towards one inq.
I was at the Nissan dealer checking out a car and after we sat down, he started asking to pull my credit. (which I will inevitably have to let someone do.) I hadn't yet let any dealer pull it, because they were too far off the price I wanted to pay for the vehicle. I'd take a credit hit if the diff was $20-$30 a month payment, but he was about $200 a mo. from where I wanted to be. I told him to get close to the payment / veh price I wanted and I'd let him pull my credit.
I figured there's no point in taking a hit for an inq if even after the inq, the price / payment would not be close to what I want to pay. (i.e. if the lowest he could get was $450 a mo. then no point in pulling my credit because I don't want to pay that.)
He told me that if he pulled my credit, it would not show up as an inq nor would I get 'dinged' for it so I should just agree to let him pull the credit scores.
Obviously, this is counter to what I've been reading on here for over a year now. I asked if he was going to do a 'hard pull' or a 'soft pull' and he stated they were the same thing (NOT!!), and then that he would do a hard pull of all three CRA; at which point I told him it would count as an inq against me and no, he wasn't doing that until the price of the vehicle came down, thereby bringing down the mo. payment.
He kept insisting that I wouldn't get dinged at all and there would be no inq showing on my report but that yes it was a hard pull. According to him, he's been "doing this for 20 years" and knows what he's talking about so I should just let him pull my credit. After about 10 minutes of this and his horrible attitude, I finally told him to stuff it, got up and walked out.
Is this really possible or he is full of it?
TU Score: 748
I for one, would not believe an auto dealership could evaluate your credit worthiness on a softie. They wouldn't have all of the information needed to do any type of financial transaction. Think about like this: has anyone EVERY given credit to you with a soft pull? my answer is no....
I applied on the internet for loans in the year 2006 and they were all hard.
You are correct. It would be a hard pull.
That is exactly what happened to me. I went in with my preapproval from CU and gave it to them and signed the forms, wrote "NO CREDIT CHECK AUTHORIZED" and they still did a hard pull, even though they told me it would be a soft pull just to confirm my identity. I was not taking the car until I had the check from the CU to hand them.
I am now telling them to take it off my CR.
Thanks for the replies!
That's what I thought. It's a fairly well-known local dealer so I wondered if maybe he knew something I did not; but what he was telling me made no sense at all and I just couldn't listen to it anymore. I have to say a year ago before I joined this site, I'd have probably just believed him. 
Interestingly, I got home about 6pm and found an answering machine msg from the guy wondering if I was willing to come back in and talk. Some nerve!
I know there's decent car dealers / salesmen out there, but jeez this guy was such a cliche it's ridiculous.
On the flipside, I got so turned off by this little experience I decided to keep my truck (which is paid for) and say the hell with buying a new one for the time being.
Thanks again!!
Greg,
They were getting the sale anyway, because they were giving me the price that I qanted and that was the best quote I had gotten. I also have a copy of the form that I signed. I sent an email telling them to remove their inquiry, because I did not ask for financing from them. Even though they kept asking me to forget about my CU and get the loan from them. I told them no way.
