Auto Loan Inquiries

Anonymous · ‎07-06-2017

So I got a new car yesterday, however it came with a bunch of inquiries. I got pre-approved at Bank of America, and then went to the dealership and they said they have to pull my credit again, then the approval amount went down, then they opened up Pandora's Box and started rate shopping for me. Now I have about 8 total INQs on each report (4-5 new ones from yesterday, a few others that are over a year old. So, is this going to have a huge impact on my score? I am also in the midst of paying off credit cards down below 80% and didnt want all of these INQs to overshadow that.

Anonymous · ‎07-06-2017

All of the auto loan related inquiries, assuming they are coded correctly, will be viewed as a single inquiry. It doesn't matter if there are 5 or 100. Consumers are expected to rate-shop so this does not adversely impact your score. I believe all auto loan inquiries made within a 30 day period are scored as 1, but I have also heard of there being a 14 day time frame. Either way, you've got nothing to worry about.

Blodreina · ‎07-07-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
All of the auto loan related inquiries, assuming they are coded correctly, will be viewed as a single inquiry. It doesn't matter if there are 5 or 100. Consumers are expected to rate-shop so this does not adversely impact your score. I believe all auto loan inquiries made within a 30 day period are scored as 1, but I have also heard of there being a 14 day time frame. Either way, you've got nothing to worry about.

It's also important to understand that while they are scored as one, all of them still appear on your reports.

Anonymous · ‎07-07-2017

@CommanderLexa wrote:
It's also important to understand that while they are scored as one, all of them still appear on your reports.

Right, but it's a non-issue as anyone performing a manual review would see that all of the inquiries were of the auto variety and that the OP was rate-shopping. The point is that the presence of a ton of these inquiries doesn't matter both from a scoring perspective and a manual review perspective.