Penfed - 3 Equifax Pulls in 20 Minutes

[Way]

Hello All -

Just writing to share my experience and perhaps spare others the frustration.  I applied to open checking/savings with Penfed yesterday.  After immediate acceptance I applied to refinance my vehicle and for a single credit card. Everything was going well until this morning when I was rummaging through my alerts and noticed 3 separate Equifax pulls.  Not even the decency to pull a different CRA.  Just triple dinged Equifax over a 30 minute period of time.

My first two calls to Penfed with some questions yesterday were fantastic.  I was really impressed with the CSRs.  Calling back today to inquire about the triple pull they weren't overly interested and the supervisor I spoke to offered her apologies, but little else.  She said repeatedly that the "rules have chanced" and the "NCUA requires."  And that every single product I apply for with Penfed moving forward will warrant it's own hardpull, even if done on the same day.  Maybe I'm just behind the times and didn't realize, but I didn't expect that to happen.  I was already borderline on Equifax.  I'm definitely closed for business on new credit for the next year.

[Anonymous]

Sorry to hear about that.

Regardless of past practices, it’s always a good idea to expect a HP with any and all credit applications and be pleasantly surprised if they use an on file recent pull or SP.

[Anonymous]

They went from one hard pull being good for 90 days to pulling you 3 times in 20 minutes? Is this Penfed’s new logo? 🤡 

Thats worse than a used car dealer.

[Anonymous]

I’ve seen a handful of abnormal HP reporting about PenFed recently. Back in October I took out a car loan with them and got 2 HPs for it on EQ- one with conditional approval and one when the loan was finalized. That was over the course of 2 days. I never inquired why.

Maybe they’ve adopted the NFCU policy: HP for everything.

[DaveInAZ]

Wow, interesting. I can see a change in policy for a HP for each new credit app, but a bit a common sense would seem to apply - do they really expect your credit to change within 20 minutes?

As for "the decency to pull a different CRA" - no Penfed only uses EQ, and it's not that uncommon for creditors who prefer on CRA to only pull that CRA. And as for "I'm definitely closed for business on new credit for the next year", most lenders aren't going to be as put off by 3 HPs on the same day from the same lender, it's the two new accounts you'll need to let age for a couple months before app'ing for new credit.

I assume you were approved for the car loan refi & CC?

[Way]

@DaveinAZ - Agreed.  I had already added a few other lines in the few past months and joined a couple of CU's recently in addition to the original truck financing pulls.  I expected this to be EQ #7 (already rough) in the past 6 months instead of EQ 7, 8, and 9.  I didn't have anything else planned anyways so it's not an issue really.  More an OCD annoyance than a real credit challenge.  And based on two different conversations with Penfed it seems clear this is their intention / new process.  So good info for any amongst us that are trying to manage that number.

[AverageJoesCredit]

Good ol' Penfed. Thats insane and really uncalled for even if applying for different products. Im forever amazed at how such a big CU operates and say they are for their members when clearly they only want certain ones. Sorry about your Cap One experience.

Ps, Penfed only pulls Eq no matter what, which seeing how awful Equihack is should be a warning to all lol.