car insurance quotes--hard INQ?

[Anonymous]

i recently did some online quotes for various car insurance companies...probably half a dozen in total.  geico sent me a notice the other day saying they pulled my credit from TU.  now i'm wondering if all of the companies did this?  i never ever told anyone they could pull my credit, but on top of this i may just be ignorant to the insurance quote world.  do they always do a hard INQ for your credit?  is there anything i can do about this? 

i spoke to someone on the phone at amica and geico, but neither said anything about a credit pull.  though i have a feeling if i called to complain, the companies would both claim i gave permission when i spoke to agents on the phone.

[Anonymous]

Credit checks are standard with insurance quotes, although usually they are soft pulls in my experience.  You can get around this by refusing to give your SSN if you just want a quote.  Keep in mind that quote could then be subject to change, though.

[Anonymous]

anyway to confirm if it was hard or soft?  i actually don't know, the geico email just implied hard.

[pizzadude]

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@Anonymous wrote:

anyway to confirm if it was hard or soft?  i actually don't know, the geico email just implied hard.

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Insurance pulls are almost always soft pulls, so I would assume that they are only soft.   The only way to know for certain would be to look at your full credit report.   And they can pull your credit ( Hard or soft ) with just a name & address, SSN # isn't always required.

[RobertEG]

FCRA 604 is a listing of permissible purposes for acquiring a consumer credit report without express permission of the consumer.

They are all, except for promotional inquiries, based on circumstances where either the consumer has initiated a request for insurance or credit, or the consumer has some existing credit or insurance that permits a party to access your full CR.  Express prior permission is only required if the party cannot meet one of the permissilbe purposes listed in section 604.  Otherwise, the credit industry would come to a standstill.

Requests on the part of a consumer to intitiate credit or insurance are a listed permissible purpose.

How they are coded (so-called "hard" vs "soft")  is based on the permissible purpose and code provided to the CRA.  Such coding is not regulated by the FCRA.

[Anonymous]

I get a credit pull every time for auto insurance, has always been soft pull for auto insurance. Never can garantee it though. I havn't had a reason to worry about insurance companies yet. Beware however, bank accounts, cell phones plans, cable, they have been known to pull hard sometimes. It's very important to allow auto insurance to pull credit "if" you have good credit. I've found that most major insurance companies adjust their premium prices based on your credit score.