I was hoping to find some advice on how to proceed after an issue with a car salesman running my credit repeatedly without permission. My wife and I bought a car from a salesman who is related to her about a year and a half ago and we recently had another child so we contacted him to keep his eye out for a larger vehicle that may work for us. After talking to him over the phone about three cars he told us after each one that we were too far "upside-down" on our vehicle because they were attempting to give us $4000 under blue book trade-in.
When we went to another dealership today and filled out a credit application it came back that our credit was run through 8 different banks, sometimes multiple times on different dates (a total of 18 new inquiries over three months) and my credit score dropped from a low 700 to a 610. Over this time I have had no new loans and made every payment on time for all of my loans (car and student only). I am planning on calling the dealership tomorrow and talk to a business manager about the issue to see if they cannot do something about the salemans actions and to contact the credit bureau to get these inquiries erased as we never gave permission to run credit and never even went to the dealership to look at any car, let alone sign any paperwork.
I wanted to check a few different resources to see if there is any other legal action that needs to be taken as I take this situation very seriously as it is fraud and forgery in my eyes. Any help that could be offered would be greatly appreciated.