Hard Inquiries

[Anonymous]

A car lot caused my credit to have 18 hard inquiries on it in 1 Days time, even after I sent them a letter telling them to stop. Is there anything I can do about this?

[Anonymous]

You have nothing to worry about, as inquiries all at the same time from a car dealership are scored as one.  It doesn't matter if the number is 1, 18 or 100.  Don't sweat it.  All you want to do is make sure they are all correctly coded as being auto inquiries.  Assuming that's the case, there is nothing adverse that can come from having a ton of them at or around the same time.

[Anonymous]

I have 4 inquiries on the same date for an auto loan. All 4 of them are coded differently, with only one of them indicating it was automobile financing. One of the things I am most looking forward to in regards to my credit repair journey is walking into the car dealership when my lease is up already having secured financing from a credit union. Those dealership donkeys are NEVER pulling my credit again. 

[adelphi_sky]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I have 4 inquiries on the same date for an auto loan. All 4 of them are coded differently, with only one of them indicating it was automobile financing. One of the things I am most looking forward to in regards to my credit repair journey is walking into the car dealership when my lease is up already having secured financing from a credit union. Those dealership donkeys are NEVER pulling my credit again. 

---

Yeah. You have to be careful. I had a pre-approval from my credit union and the dealer tried to get me to fill out a credit app three times. I refused three times. The first time they said I needed to fill it out to verify my identity.    Hell no!  THen, they said I needed to fill it out to take the car home in case I steal it.   Hell no!  Then the finance guy tried to get me to sign it to see if they could give me a better rate. Hell no!  Never ever sign any document that gives them the right to even do a soft pull. And NEVER give them your SSN. 

[RobertEG]

Getting the consumer to sign papers authorizing a credit pull is usually only a courtesy or a business practice to avoid complaints from consumers who do not understand the law.  Lack of specific consumer authorization is not basis for preventing a legitimate inquiry for your credit report.

If a consumer initiates any request for credit, or their purchase transaction involves some legitimate business need for them to review your credit history as part of the transaction (such as payiing with a personal check), the FCRA is structured to permit them to obtain your credit report without any need for your specific authorization.  FCRA 604 defines what are called "permissible purposes" for which a credit inquiry is authorized without any need for consumer approval.  Otherwise, processing of business and credit transactions would come to a crawl, and/or be mired in litigation over he-said, she-said issues of specific authorization.

[trusty]

Whether they have permissible purpose is largely no matter, as long as the consumer is savvy enough to freeze or lock their credit - prior to even showing up to the dealership; and then, only allowing access if and when actually applying for a loan.

That way, the car dealer can try to weasel a hard pull, until the cows come home, and yet, they will only get access when we are good and ready to provide it, for our own permissible purpose.

[trusty]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
A car lot caused my credit to have 18 hard inquiries on it in 1 Days time, even after I sent them a letter telling them to stop. Is there anything I can do about this?

---

It makes sense to pull credit once... in the course of verifying and obtaining financing, from a manufacturer that doubles as a direct lender.

However, 18 inquiries is totally unreasonable, under any circumstance; and I would absolutely dispute these as fraudulent, unless this inordinate amount of redundant applications was explicitly authorized.

Whether it hurts one's score misses the point. This is considered damaging... because any manual review becomes significantly biased by the existence of dozens of undue credit applications. 

Ideally, a consumer credit file would be pulled once; and then, any further prospective lenders would be copied to the same report & score. However, this is the kind of thing that the data aggregators absolutely don't want, because there's alternatively a fee - each and every time credit is pulled.

So, there's actually a disincentive to removing redundancies from the process. Go figure.

It never makes sense to redundantly pull the exact same file 18 times over, for one single purchase.

That's like buying 18 digital copies of the same book, just so that it can be read more than once.

I know... it has to do with distribution rights. However, they shouldn't be taking advantage in ways that are deliberately inefficient, and ultimately hurtful to the consumer; particularly when consumers aren't receiving any royalties for data aggregators using personal information (that doesn't belong to them) in order to generate revenues from these kinds of outmoded abuses.

The issue is that we're no longer the customer in the situation... we're the product. Therefore, they've sold our information umpteen times over, and then proceeded to sell you a loan on top of that. Too many grubby paws in the mix.

If this is all done under the guise of permissible purpose, than we absolutely need new regulations, that both streamline these processes, with common sense, based on today's technical capabilities; as well as, compensate consumers for having their personal information sold many times over.

[marty56]

---

@troylasvegas wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:
A car lot caused my credit to have 18 hard inquiries on it in 1 Days time, even after I sent them a letter telling them to stop. Is there anything I can do about this?

---

If this is all done under the guise of permissible purpose, than we absolutely need new regulations, that both streamline these processes, with common sense, based on today's technical capabilities; as well as, compensate consumers for having their personal information sold many times over.

---

I think the issue is that some dealers have a large number of lenders they deal with so they shop you to all of them to see which one will approve, give the best deal, or IMHO offer the best kickback to the dealer.  I believe some of those mortage finders cause the same issue to happen.

Not sure if this would stop this but would going to a dealer with a pre-approval from a local CU or a lender that they deal with stop them from "helping" you find a lender.

[trusty]

In many cases, a dealer shopping for a loan would indicate challenges, with what otherwise should be a relatively straightforward process.

But, consumers that are just starting out, or coming back from the depths... cannot afford to have their credit reports besmirched at the behest of profit for others.

Either we get some regulations, or this type of thing should be filed under Promotional, Soft Inquiries... because massive loan sourcing like this, with dozens of inquries as the fallout, just doesn't otherwise make practical sense.