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How to Remove WFDS from Your Credit Report

By:
Money Staff
8 min read

Have you found the name WFDS on your credit report and worried about what it means? WFDS is an acronym for Wells Fargo Dealer Services. It’s likely on your report because you applied for a car loan through Wells Fargo. Auto loan applications can lead to hard inquiries on your credit report, which may slightly impact your score. However, if you didn’t recently apply for an auto loan through Wells Fargo, read on to learn more about what you can do to remove an inaccurate entry from your credit report.

WFDS on my credit report

WFDS may be an unfamiliar name, but the company it represents isn’t. As one of the nation’s premier financial institutions, Wells Fargo has over 70 million customers. The bank provides banking, investing and lending to consumers nationwide, including auto financing through Wells Fargo Dealer Services.

When you apply for an auto loan, even if you end up choosing a different lender’s offer, your credit report will undergo a hard inquiry. If you applied for an auto loan or opened an account prior to 2008, your report could feature an entry from WFDS/WDS, with the “WDS” referring to Wachovia Dealer Services. Keep reading to learn more details about what a hard inquiry entails.

How does a WFDS hard inquiry affect your credit report?

Hard inquiries can impact your credit score in a few different ways. Whenever you apply for a loan, line of credit or credit card, the lender or creditor will want to see your credit report to get an idea of how responsibly you’ve used credit in the past. To do so, they’ll request a copy of your report from one or more of the three major credit bureaus.

Hard inquiries typically lower your score by a couple of points, and they stay on your report for a maximum of two years. Hard credit pulls are a necessary part of getting approved for new credit, and they hardly influence your score. In other words, prospective lenders won’t penalize you for having a few hard inquiries every so often.

However, frequently applying for cards and loans can suggest that you aren’t the most dependable applicant and may lead to a denial. It’s important to look at the approval requirements for loans and cards before applying to avoid an unnecessary inquiry.

When you’re shopping for a certain type of credit, like an auto loan or a mortgage, you can reduce the impact of hard inquiries by completing all your applications within a 14-day span. It’s also important to understand the difference between hard and soft credit checks.

Soft inquiries happen whenever you access your score with a credit monitoring app, go through a background check or get pre-approved for an offer. These types of inquiries don’t grant you approval for funding, so they have no bearing on your score.

How to remove WFDS from your credit report

If you don’t recognize WFDS because you never applied for one of their auto loans, you may be the subject of a reporting error, or unfortunately, identity theft. If you didn’t apply for a Wells Fargo car loan, you shouldn’t let it go. Here are a couple of ways you can go about getting the hard inquiry deleted from your report:

Dispute the inquiry with Wells Fargo and the bureaus

You may want to start the dispute process by contacting a specialist at Wells Fargo. You can call, write or meet with a representative of the bank to get to the bottom of the inquiry. In doing so, you may realize that you did apply for a loan in the past or serve as an authorized user for someone else. You may also possibly learn more information that can be helpful in stopping whoever is using your information fraudulently.

You can contact Wells Fargo using these details:

Wells Fargo

Attn: Correspondence Support
6200 Park Avenue, First Floor
Des Moines, IA 50321-1270

Phone number: 1-800-289-8004

Your next step is to contact the credit bureaus that feature the entry from WFDS on their reports. The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires that the bureaus investigate when you file a dispute regarding an unknown hard inquiry. If the bureaus find the entry to be erroneous, the agencies remove it from your account quickly.

If an identity thief is behind the entry, you can proceed by putting a security freeze on your reports, which is free. You can also put a fraud alert on your TransUnion report, which will, in turn, notify the other bureaus.

Keep up with your credit

It’s important that you continue to monitor your credit report. If someone uses your personal information to apply for a loan, you’ll be able to alert the bureaus quickly and stop the identity thief from destroying your credit.

Credit monitoring services give you score updates and notifications when credit companies add entries to your report. Those companies also give you personalized tools for boosting your credit. Many of these services that come from companies, such as Experian Boost, Credit Karma and Credit Sesame, are free.

Hire a credit repair company

Reporting identity theft, disputing reporting errors and getting the entry removed can be arduous tasks. Luckily, you don’t have to handle the process by yourself. There are several reputable credit repair companies that can assist you with things like disputing a simple reporting error and recovering from bankruptcy. Additionally, these companies can help you if you’re facing:

Many of these companies have different packages to choose from, so you can select the right level of service for your financial situation. If you’d like help improving your score, you can research credit repair companies and choose the best option for you.

Dealing with WFDS on your credit report

Don’t let an auto loan application cause undue stress. While a hard inquiry from WFDS may have a negative impact on your score, it won’t affect your score at all two years from now.

Remember that if you suspect that someone may have used your information to apply for a loan without your consent or that there may be an error on your report, you should dispute it. Whether you choose to handle disputing the inquiry on your own or hire a credit repair company, don’t delay in getting the entry removed.

Disclaimer: This story was originally published on December 28, 2020, on BetterCreditBlog.org. To find the most relevant information concerning collections or credit card inquiries, please visit: https://money.com/how-to-remove-collections-from-credit-report/ or https://money.com/get-items-removed-from-credit-report/

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