Singed on a deal last month on the 16th, Received a letter this morning from the dealership stating-
“Thank you for your recent application for vehicle financing. This letter is being sent to you as a courtesy and pursuant to federal law because you may have been denied credit or were offered financing at less favorable terms than you requested. A number of factors were taken into account when reviewing your application including a review of your consumer credit report and score(s). This notice is being provided only to you and in no way impacts your credit history or score. It is sent to inform you of legal rights you have concerning obtaining a copy of your credit report and the factors that affect your credit score(s).
In evaluating your application, the consumer reporting agency listed below provided the dealership with information that in whole or in part influenced our decision. The consumer reporting agency played no part in our decision and is unable to supply specific reasons why we may have denied credit to you. You have a right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to know the information contained in your credit file at the consumer reporting agency. It can be obtained by contacting the bureau(s) listed below. You also have a right to a free copy of your report from the reporting agency, if you request it no later than 60 days after you receive this notice. In addition, if you find that any information contained in the report you receive is inaccurate or incomplete, you have the right to dispute the matter with the reporting agency.”
I am not sure what steps to take from here or who to contact first. Does this indicate I need to secure my own financing? what responsibility does the dealership have when it comes to this? I don’t know and don’t want to take the wrong first steps.
The financing rate I signed on was 3.24% for 60 months with arrowhead through the dealership.
Dealership most likely sent your application to multiple lenders. One of them probably denied you. Doesn’t affect what you’ve already been approved for and signed
Funny… just received a similar letter with the reason “Identity could not be verified”. But then also received the first payment bill from them in the same batch of mail.
tl;dr: it’s a compliance (CYA) measure by the dealer
Most likely the dealer has those sent to everyone who comes in and applies for credit, even if they’re approved for the best advertised rate. (The credit bureau often mails these on the dealer’s behalf, for a fee above what the dealer paid for the credit report used to decision the loan application.)
The reason is here:
If you leave with financing you’re happy with and it falls through and the dealer have to obtain credit elsewhere at different terms, they’d have to add a step in their workflow to manually produce and mail you an AA letter to avoid exposure to regulatory action, class action law suits, allegations of discrimination, and all kind of other unpleasant and expensive things.
Having the bureau send these automatically leaves nothing in this regard to chance.
I received an AA letter when I financed my CPO at the advertised 0.9% APR, which were the best terms offered. As recommended by others in this thread, I discarded it and moved on.
