PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL! - Tung Nguyen
PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL!
... AND BE AWARE WITH THEIR WORDS/PAPERWORK!!!
I'M FEELING SO HURT AND DECEIVED AFTER TODAY'S EXCHANGE!
- Saturday, 12/30/2023, a rainy day, just right before the year about to end, me and my husband, your casual neighbor gay couple came into the dealership trying to test drive a used Chevy car. We were introduced to and worked with a car salesman named Spencer.
- We let Spencer know RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING, that we just wanted to test drive the car and talk about the sale price of the car WITHOUT actually submitting a credit hard inquiry/application since we're not ready to commit to purchase the car without getting a good sale price.
- We ALSO let Spencer know that we are already pre-approved and banked with Capital One. We told Spencer we FULLY know that when we actually commit to purchase the car, then we'll have to submit a credit hard inquiry for the official auto loan at the dealership. But we ALREADY know about the bank's interest rate and the auto FICO score that we would get, so we really don't want to discuss about the monthly payments just yet. Just straight up sale price to discuss at this point.
- Spencer INSISTED at even in order for us to continue the conversation of price discussing, they still need to run a soft inquiry application with all of my info (SSN, income...), and that was totally fine with us. We know If it's just a soft inquiry without showing up on my credit report, it would be no issue at all.
- We ASKED Spencer THREE (3) times before signing ANYTHING, that will paperwork show up on our credit reports at Experian, Equifax & TransUnion as a hard inquiry or not. Spencer, without ANY uncertainty in his voice or facial expression, ASSURED me that it WILL NOT show up as a hard inquiries in all these 3 credit bureaus. So we allowed Spencer to run the inquiry.
- SURPRISED SURPRISED, 1 minute after he ran the inquiry, all 3 credit bureaus sent me alerts saying there was a HARD INQUIRY into my reports.
- We, again, ASKED Spencer what would it means, he still with a straight face, told us it would not affect our credit score or be considered as a hard inquiry at all.
- We called all three credit bureaus afterward, all the credit bureaus confirmed and let us know it was INDEED AN HARD INQUIRY AND WILL AFFECT MY CREDIT SCORE, even if the drop is minimal.
- We asked to talk with the sale manager to see if ANYTHING can be done at this point. We DO UNDERSTAND sometimes people, just like Spencer, can be misinformed and gave out an incorrect info, but we would hope there would be some remedies from the dealership.
- Dough Larson, the Sale Manager, basically told us THERE WAS NOTHING THEY WILL EVER ABLE TO DO/HELP US. Dough basically told us that we were so careless to sign something we don't know about. However, we ASKED Spencer 3 times before even sign the paper. The paper has lots of terms and text and languages, but NO WHERE ON THE PAPER that even mention about anything that say "HARD INQUIRY" or "AFFECT CREDIT SCORE". I did read through the inquiry application, and ASKED Spencer the FOURTH (4th) time if this inquiry would count as a hard inquiry and affect my credit score. "No, we WOULD NOT put a hard inquiry on your credit reports" said Spencer.
- Dough told me I can either get the lawyer involved on my own, or call the credit bureaus to dispute those inquiries on my own, but there would be NOTHING THEY CAN HELP US at this point.
- We told him that we came in being interested in looking and discussed for an used car, so we do want the car, but the price was a little far off. It's totally okay for the dealer to not budge on the price of a used car, but we got lied to about the hard inquiries, and then got told Dough was basically TOP OF THE MANAGEMENT CHAIN... not even "Let me spending some more time to think about the situation, and I'll also ask the owners and other managers about this and see if there is any kind of remedy that we could offer you guys after today's situation".
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