After a visit to a Toyota dealership last weekend, my credit reports were hit by at least a half-dozen inquiries. While I arranged financing through Toyota Financial Services, the dealership clearly shopped the loan around to a number of other lenders, including Capital One, US Bank, Mechanics Bank, etc.
I had my EX and EQ reports locked, so all those extra inquiries were blocked. However, they all hit my TU report, which wasn't locked.
From what I've read, these multiple inquiries are not necessarily a concern, thanks to the practice of "de-duplicating" or "de-duping". Apparently the credit bureaus realize that buying an automobile often involves mulitple inquiries as a buyer shops for cars and financing. It wouldn't be fair to punish buyers by hitting their reports with a half-dozen inquiries all at once. So they consider all the auto inquiries made over a few days as a single inquiry rather than many.
Does anyone know the limits of this practice? Does de-duping take into account inquiries made over several days rather than all at once? Any other details on this practice?
@ridgebackpilot wrote:After a visit to a Toyota dealership last weekend, my credit reports were hit by at least a half-dozen inquiries. While I arranged financing through Toyota Financial Services, the dealership clearly shopped the loan around to a number of other lenders, including Capitol One, US Bank, and Mechanics Bank, etc.
I had my EX and EQ reports locked, so all those extra inquiries were blocked. However, they all hit my TU report, which wasn't locked.
From what I've read, these multiple inquiries are not necessarily a concern, thanks to the practice of "de-duplicating" or "de-duping". Apparently the credit bureaus know that buying a car often involves mulitple inquiries as a buyer shops for cars and financing. It wouldn't be fair to punish buyers by hitting their reports with a half-dozen inquiries all at once. So they consider all the auto inquiries made over a few days as a single inquiry rather than many.
Does anyone know the limits of this practice? Does de-duping take into account inquiries made over several days rather than all at once? Any other details on this practice?
See message 4. B. Inquiries
Here is the paragraph from the referenced post above that probably best answers your question:
"Please note that when applying for CCs, most lender computers simply see the raw number of inquiries, not de-duplicated. This causes auto denial for inquiry-sensitive lenders. A solution is not to apply to lenders that do not allow reconsideration (looking at you CapOne). If you apply and are denied for too many inquiries (credit-seeking), a quick call to UW explaining the multiple inquiries are from rate-shopping the same loan will usually cause manual reconsideration."
