Credit Score Myths and Facts

First post. Please merge appropriately, but I could not find a dedicated topic on this.
I had a few questions on the credit score.

  1. Is the credit score just a number OR there is an additional layer of factors that the lending company considers?
    I mean can an excellent score which has no auto finance history will be at par with an excellent score with good amount of auto finance history?
    Or an excellent score with just two years of credit history be same as an excellent score with say, 12 years of credit history?

  2. What lending companies use what credit score? Do we have a list? Does it help if we take/share our own report/score for initial negotiations? Rather than having them make a hard query?

  3. Are the money factor/apr same for an entire range (Say Very Good or Excellent) (other factors remaining same) OR are there lending agency sepcific sub bands? for e.g. 750-800 is X% but 800-850 is a bit lower?

  4. I read in a discussion regarding freezing the credit history before initiating discussions and thawing?/unfreezing it for when we have made up our mind? What are the best practices regarding these?

  5. I also had a friend whose account was hit by multiple hard queries from various agencies just sitting at a Nissan showroom. Can we and should we limit the finance team from making queries through various agencies somehow?

Feel free to share other pertinent information or direct me to threads where this has been discussed in detail?

Yep! I would look at:

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Thanks! I’d be reading there! Should have searched better!