This is in the United States. I applied for a credit card but unbeknownst to me the CRA(s) had placed a fraud Alert on my report after one of them was hacked and then as "compensation" they provided one of those ridiculous Identity Protection products for free and I was dumb enough to accept. The fraud alert requires any lender to contact me by phone, but CRA did not include my phone number in the alert/personal statement, so my application was set to pending status and I needed to call in to Application Processing team, who then informed me of the alert and that I needed to contact the CRAs and have the alert modified or removed to proceed, which I did. I was also told that an additional hard inquiry would be needed to re-pull my credit report/score to proceed with application, which seems wrong, but not under my control.
So main question: will two or more hard inquiries from same lender for same application be treated as a single hard inquiry for purposes of calculating credit score? Or will I end up with multiple hard inquiries which would have the effect of misleadingly dragging down my credit score for a couple of years?
Most Credit Scores are not affected by multiple inquiries from auto, mortgage or student loan lenders within a short period of time. Much more important is paying debts on time and your credit to debt ratio.
Not very helpful...OP had nothing to do with how to raise or maintain a good score. Also, the question was specific in asking about multiple hard inquiries for same lender/credit card application; if you have any insight or knowledge regarding that, I'm all ears!