Consumer complaint received 2025-04-14 00:00:00
Product: Vehicle loan or lease — Loan
Issue: Getting a loan or lease — Confusing or misleading advertising or marketing
Company: Credit Karma, LLC
State: TX

Complaint narrative:
I am a member of Credit Karma and use it to keep track of my credit information. Credit Karma frequently offers financial products on the home page of their app. On XX/XX/year> they displayed an offer for an auto loan refinance at 4.99 %. My current rate on my vehicle is 6.74 %, so XXXX is a significant savings and I was interested in taking this offer. The button under the rate was labeled " see offers '' which when clicked on takes you to another landing page showing a XXXX percent interest rate. The " Legal Disclosure '' they display even says " based on your XXXX Credit report of XXXX. '' furthering the understanding that my credit has been checked to determine the rate. The button to continue with the refinance was labeled " accept offer '' and to me indicated that since this was through Credit Karma, they already know my credit score and generated that interest rate based on my credit score. I have a very good credit score and try to protect that score by not having unnecessary inquires on my credit and making sure all bills are paid on time.

I continued the process to start the refinance and was directed through Credit Karma 's app to a page that provided information to a company called " Autopay '' who I believed was the lender doing the refinance. I filled in all the information requested by Autopay and submitted the application. The next day I was contacted by Autopay to confirm my information and complete the application. At some point a hard inquiry was added to my credit report by XXXX XXXX XXXX. After talking to their representative for a while, he asked what my current loan rate was and I told him that it was 6.74 % and he replied that with the lender they sent my info to ( XXXX XXXX ) that they would be unable to compete with XXXX and that I was better off keeping my current loan. I was very irritated at this point and asked him why I was offered 4.99 % and now I'm being told they can't beat XXXX. He gave me the excuse that each loan is based on credit and asset equity etc. My credit is excellent ( credit karma already knows my credit score ) and I put over 20k down on my vehicle so it has plenty of Equity ... He also claimed that Autopay is just the middleman, and XXXX XXXX sets the rates, and Credit Karma just advertises the rates and drives business to Autopay who brokers the loan to other Credit Unions. I Respectfully asked Autopay to remove the hard inquiry from my credit report, as they created false pretenses ( low APR ) to convince me to click on the offer and apply for the loan based on getting a XXXX rate. The representative at Autopay ( XXXX ) said that they didn't pull the credit and that XXXX was the only XXXX who could remove the inquiry. I didn't authorize XXXX to pull my credit, I thought I was dealing with Autopay. I called XXXX and they basically told me that by giving information to Autopay, I was authorizing them to broker my loan out to anyone and let them pull credit. They said I could dispute it with the credit bureaus, but I don't feel like they were acting in good faith when running my credit. Again, the only reason I allowed my credit to be run was to obtain a loan at 4.99 % which it appears nobody actually could provide. I believe this to be deceptive trade practices and definitely bait and switch.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation