Inquiries

[emily15]

Not sure if this post Is in the right place but I wanted to get some feedback on whether or not a dispute is worth it.
A little background: sorry it’s a little long
I was car shopping in March and was preapproved through my bank (bank of America). They advised me to go to one of their “preferred dealers” with the preapproval letter saying that the process is really easy from there since all dealer needs to do is pull up the app.
When we got to the dealer and were ready to buy, sales manager brought out a credit app. I said that my loan officer from BofA told me they wouldn’t need to run my credit again since I had the preapproval and they were a preferred dealer, sales manager tells me it’s (And I quote) “a soft inquiry only” and “only with the dealer itself”. I didn’t believe him because he even asked “if I can get you a better rate would you be interested” I said no, I want to go with my bank. So he assured me they weren’t going to shotgun the app, so I signed the form.
Fast forward, they ran my credit 3 times all hard inquires: 1 with Kia Financing, 1 with the dealer and another with Bank of America.

After all was said and done I spoke to my finance officer at BofA to warn her about sending their customers there, She advised me to dispute the inquiries.

Is it worth it to dispute any of them? I have witnesses to the conversation but I DID sign a paper giving them permission to run my credit so it seems I’m out of luck and it would just be my word against the document they have.

Any advice appreciated.

[Brian_Earl_Spilner]

Doubt you could dispute since you signed the dotted line. You actually didn't come out too bad. When I bought my car, I was already gauranteed a loan with Chase, but I needed to submit a credit app to Mazda. Since Chase is the captive lender, the app was a double pull to EX and EQ. Once Chase got the app, there was an additional double pull (because Chase) to EX and EQ. Doesn't make any sense to me because the dealer already pulled it for Chase. In your situation, it looks like they did their pull, the BofA pull for them, and went to their captive. They didn't actually shotgun your app, but I don't think they should have pulled for BofA. As for Kia, they may be required to submit an app to them, but it should have been disclosed.

[Anonymous]

What was the length of time between when BofA pulled your credit and when the dealer did? Because from what I understand, if it was a short amount of time, it's only going to count as one inquiry anyway as far as your credit score is concerned, and they will all be totally irrelevant for scoring purposes after 12 months. Just something to keep in mind if your dispute doesn't work out.

[Brian_Earl_Spilner]

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@Anonymous wrote:

What was the length of time between when BofA pulled your credit and when the dealer did? Because from what I understand, if it was a short amount of time, it's only going to count as one inquiry anyway as far as your credit score is concerned, and they will all be totally irrelevant for scoring purposes after 12 months. Just something to keep in mind if your dispute doesn't work out.

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You'll only be dinged once depending on how close they are to each other, but they still count as individual inquiries when your credit is pulled by a lender. For example, dealer shotguns to 30 lenders in one day. You only get dinged 5 points. But, when you apply for new credit in the future, a computer may auto denial for too many inquiries. You would have to recon to explain them.

[Anonymous]

Let me say this. I dealt with a shady dealership who ran my app pre qual, then two days later ran it again through 7 other banks the day I went to get my car. EVERY SINGLE ONE was a ding against my hard inquiries. So always be prepared for that. I’m not sure how people are getting lumped amount of dings. But that wasn’t my case. I’ve sat with my car almost 2 years and 6 of the dings are finally supposed to come off this August.

[Anonymous]

I think you may be confusing what we are saying. Yes, each inquiry counts as a single inquiry in terms of the number of inquiries, and a new prospective lender can obviously ding you for that after they run your credit and see the number of inquiries. But, from what I understand, for FICO SCORING PURPOSES, and for those purposes ONLY, multiple inquiries of the same type in a short period of time for auto loans do not count as multiple inquiries and ding your score a few points for each inquiry. This is so that people sren;t penalized for rate shopping when making a major purchase, like for a car.

So, if a dealer shotguns your app to 10 different lenders for an auto loan, yes, your inquiry count will increase by 10. But your score won't be dinged 10 separate times for each separate inquiry.