Contesting HP from Credit Union

[Anonymous]

A credit union I was briefly with for two months hard pulled my Equifax. I never applied for credit with them. I've since closed the account. Do I have any chances of contesting the hard pull, and if so, how should I go about it?

[DaveInAZ]

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@Anonymous wrote:

A credit union I was briefly with for two months hard pulled my Equifax. I never applied for credit with them. I've since closed the account. Do I have any chances of contesting the hard pull, and if so, how should I go about it?

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No. Many credit unions hard pull your credit report to join them, it's buried in their terms of service that by applying for membership you authorize them to obtain your credit report.

[Anonymous]

Does their hard pull report differently on my credit report than say, a hard pull if I did a credit card application, or to a lender does it all look the same? I'm about to apply for a loan and am concerned about the extra recent HP.

[DaveInAZ]

No, all Hard Pulls are treated equally, whether they are from an application for credit, to rent an apartment, or from a cell phone carrier.

If the lender is concerned about the HP you can explain it was to join a credit union, not from applying for credit. HPs on your credit report don't indicate the purpose of the inquiry, it just list the name of the company that pulled your credit.

Hard pulls usually aren't a concern for most lenders unless you have dozens of them in the past few months. I got 6 HPs from buying a car last fall, and have been approved for 3 credit cards since then.

[Anonymous]

It is worth noting though that a bunch of inquiries at the same time from an auto purchase are scored/viewed as 1 inquiry, so long as they are correctly coded.

[DaveInAZ]

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@Anonymous wrote:

It is worth noting though that a bunch of inquiries at the same time from an auto purchase are scored/viewed as 1 inquiry, so long as they are correctly coded.

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Yes, but I knew about car dealers shopping you around for a loan with a bunch of HPs, so I got a pre-qualified loan offer from a small local credit union, HP#1 on EX. Then even with the pre-qual the dealer still required that they pull my credit, what they didn't tell me was that it was a triple pull from all 3 CRAs, ala Cap One, HPs#2,3,4. Then they got me a slightly better loan offer from a larger CU, HP#5 on EX. I insisted they go with my pre-qual loan. Then the next afternoon the finance guy called me and told me the small CU didn't answer them fast enough so he was sending my loan to the larger CU, for some reason they HP'd again, HP#6 on EX. They probably view HPs 4,5 & 6 as 1 inquiry as they're all CUDL (Credit Union Direct Lending), but not the other 3.

[JVille]

As far as the CU is concerned if you opened a Checking Acct they are extending you credit by giving you access to a bunch of checks and a debit card. If you have bad credit they won’t let you open even a Savings account.
The HP is there to stay...

[RobertEG]

It is a common misconception that inquiries are limited to requests for credit.

FCRA 604 lists as a permissible purpose to pull your credit report a business transaction initiated by the consumer for which there is a legitimate business need to review the consumer's prior credit report information.

Common and acceptable business transactions that can incur a debt on the part of a consumer, and thus have an associated permissible purpose, include most utility company billings and banking accounts that can incur fees or other indebtedness, such as overdraft.

Any dispute of the legitimacy of an inquiry will likely be countered by some recognized showing of a possible debt by the consumer, and thus a legitimate business need to review their credit history.

[Anonymous]

@RobertEG - Thanks! That's really helpful. (Even though I turned off overdraft )