So I gave TransUnion a call, and surprisingly their call center reps all have an Indian accents after speaking with multiple people on there who give generic memorized answers.
Basically my inquiry was, if you're looking to get a pre-approval from a couple banks within the same time period, would all credit checks affect your credit score negatively or do they just count all the checks from the banks as one inquiry if made during a specific time period? I know all of these will be hard inquiries, by the way.
For me, I received a pre-approval through TD, but shortly after found that BMO offered something slightly better as a safety net. This was only 2 weeks ago, so my question is if I decided to get a pre-approval with BMO as well, would it count as one inquiry since it was done within 2 weeks, or is it going to lower my score twice?
The representatives for TransUnion told me it doesn't matter when you do the check, it will lower it regardless. From how they responded, I'm not sure I could take their word for it.
I know this is from the US, but here is what I mean:
What to know about "rate shopping."
Looking for a mortgage, auto or student loan may cause multiple lenders to request your credit report, even though you are only looking for one loan. To compensate for this, the score ignores mortgage, auto, and student loan inquiries made in the 30 days prior to scoring. So, if you find a loan within 30 days, the inquiries won't affect your score while you're rate shopping. In addition, the score looks on your credit report for mortgage, auto, and student loan inquiries older than 30 days. If it finds some, it counts those inquiries that fall in a typical shopping period as just one inquiry when determining your score. For FICO scores calculated from older versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 14 day span. For FICO scores calculated from the newest versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 45 day span. Each lender chooses which version of the FICO scoring formula it wants the credit reporting agency to use to calculate your FICO score.
http://www.myfico.com/crediteducatio...inquiries.aspx