Consumer complaint received 2022-06-22
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports — Other personal consumer report
Issue: Improper use of your report — Reporting company used your report improperly
Company: Rocket Mortgage, LLC (MO)

On XX/XX/2022 we took a call from an employee of Rocket Mortgage as we had been inquiring about what rates they could give us. During the course of this call the employee told us they would need to perform a soft credit inquiry to be able to quote us a rate. We confirmed that we would only need to do a soft inquiry, but the information required over the phone included SSNs and the calls are recorded. We stated that we did not feel comfortable giving SSNs over a recorded call. We were then directed to use the website to provide the information to perform the soft credit inquiry. We verbally confirmed that the website could do a soft credit inquiry. 

On XX/XX/2022, we missed a call from the employee following up about the application. We started filling out the information on the site for the soft credit inquiry, and made contact with the employee via telephone. There were some questions during the course of the form completion, most importantly confirmation that the process we were currently going through would result in a soft credit inquiry. At the employees direction we put in clearly nonsensical SSNs ( eg XXXX ) as he stated that would not be able to result in a hard credit inquiry. We submitted the form, asking questions while on the phone with the employee through the majority of the process. Our intention, and what we had been lead to believe was that we were submitting information to perform a soft credit inquiry. 

As a result of the form submission the system performed a hard credit inquiry, resulting in a decrease in the credit scores of both parties seeking the mortgage. We have contacted the company to declare that a hard inquiry was neither our intention, nor what we were lead to believe by the employee. We asked that the inquiry be marked as mistaken in some manner to reverse the damage to our credit scores. The employee stated that a hard inquiry should not have happened based on the instructions we had followed. 

Rocket mortgage requested time to review the recorded calls as well as the form submission. We heard back from them on XX/XX/2022, with the position that the form submission constituted consent to perform a hard inquiry. We asked if they reviewed the calls and heard us specifically consent only to a soft inquiry, and complete the form at the direction of the employee assuring us that it would result in a soft inquiry. They said they hadn't heard that and would re-review the incident. We had specifically given that information prior to the first review process and have little confidence that the second review will properly review the relevant information in the calls. 

We hold that we were guided through a process that ended with a result that we did not intend. If there was user error we were guided into user error. And in any case, credit is such an important part of the financial system that there should be processes in place to declare that a mistake was made, and allow it to be reversed.