Is there a COAF credit inquiry on your credit report?
Hard inquiries are often the result of a credit card or a loan application, and COAF is no exception.
COAF may appear on your report after applying for an auto loan or buying a car with funding from Capital One.
Your report may also show a hard inquiry from COAF if you agreed to be a cosigner for someone else’s car loan application.
Read on to learn more about Capital One Auto Finance and how a hard inquiry can impact your score.
We’ll also give you a few pointers on getting COAF off your credit report if you didn’t apply for an auto loan with the company.
What Is COAF?
COAF is the auto financing arm of the popular financial institution Capital One.
It offers loans for new and used vehicles, along with refinancing options.
When you apply for a car loan with COAF, the company will pull your credit report to assess your credit.
COAF might also pull your credit if you are listed as a co-applicant on someone else’s car loan from Capital One.
How Long Will the COAF Credit Inquiry Stay on Your Report?
There are essentially two kinds of credit inquiries, hard and soft.
A soft credit check is one that does not have an impact on your credit score.
Soft credit pulls sometimes occur when you compare quotes for a loan, are pre-approved for an offer, or check your credit score online.
Hard credit checks are a bit more exhaustive and take place once you’ve completed an application for a loan or a credit card.
They also occur when you cosign on a loan for someone as you are essentially applying for the loan as well.
Hard inquiries allow lenders to access your full credit report from Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, or all three.
This type of inquiry stays on your report for two years and may drop your score by a few points. However, if you have several hard inquiries on your report, it can be a red flag to prospective lenders and result in a more severe drop.
To lower the impact of multiple hard inquiries when you’re shopping around for the best rates on a home or auto loan, try to complete all of your applications in a 14-day timeframe.
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How to Get COAF Deleted from Your Credit Report
Is it possible to get a hard inquiry deleted from your credit report? In some cases, yes.
If you’ve never submitted an application for a Capital One auto loan and haven’t consented to be a co-applicant with someone else, you may be the victim of identity fraud or a reporting error.
When a hard inquiry is the result of faulty reporting or identity theft, you should be able to get it removed with one of the two strategies below.
Dispute the COAF Credit Inquiry with Capital One and the Bureaus
Your credit should never be damaged by a loan application you didn’t submit.
If someone else has applied for a loan using your name and information or there’s been some other reporting error, it’s important to understand the rights granted to you by the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1990.
According to this law, you have 30 days to dispute an inquiry once it appears on your credit report.
You just need to mail in a letter disputing the entry to COAF. You might also want to dispute the entry with the credit bureaus in order to get it deleted.
In order to catch inaccuracies on your report quickly and stay on top of changes to your score, you should use an online credit monitoring service like Credit Karma or Credit Sesame.
Also, keep in mind that you can access a free copy of your credit report once a year on annualcreditreport.com.
Work with a Credit Repair Company
A single hard inquiry isn’t going to destroy your credit. In fact, it will be dropped from your report completely in two years.
That being said, if a hard inquiry is only a small part of your credit issues, you may want to consult with a credit repair specialist.
There are a handful of top-tier credit repair companies that can work with you to tackle all of your credit problems, which might include:
- Bankruptcy
- Charge offs
- Debt in collections
- Foreclosures
- Identity fraud
- Judgment
- Liens
If your credit score needs a major boost, a credit repair company can be well worth the cost.
Even if your credit issues are less severe than some of the ones mentioned above, a credit repair company can relieve the stress of having to contact lenders and the credit bureaus to dispute negative entries on your report.
