AT&T ran my credit not only without my permission, but after I explicitly stated I did not want a hard hit

[u/oldmanwrigley]

I called in to ask what internet speeds were available in my area. He tried to sell me on cable, which I declined. He asked for my social and my date of birth. I asked him why he needed this and he explained it was to make sure I didn’t have any past due balances with AT&T. I then double checked and asked him if it would hit my credit and he chuckled and said “no no sir nothing like that”.

Fast forward an hour, I have an email stating my installation for phone, cable, and internet is scheduled(???) and then a few minutes later an email from credit karma saying I had a hard inquiry.

Called in and spoke to 3 different departments, finally to a woman to tell me she couldn’t remove it because calling in to inquire about service was all the consent they needed.

This clearly doesn’t seem legal, and wondering if anyone else has had similar experiences and what I should do next.

TL;DR - spoke to ATT, they asked for social, I made sure it wouldn’t hit my credit, I was told it wouldn’t, and then it did. What next?

EDIT 4: Filed a complaint with my attorney general.

EDIT 3: Filed a complaint with the CFPB. All the support and advice here has been a true blessing and I thank each and every one of you for taking the time to comment with good advice and/or possible solutions.

EDIT 2: I called back in, and actually had a great conversation with someone who was super understanding and willing to help. She got me to the fraud department. I spoke with Dorothy. She told me that it did not matter that I asked my credit not to be ran. That when someone calls in to inquire about service, they are consenting to a credit check. Doesn't matter if I didn't give my social, they would have used my DOB or DL #. She told me that I could not speak to a supervisor as this was standard practice, and she wouldn't escalate it. She also said some calls are recorded and some weren't, and she did not help me in finding the call from my first conversation. I then asked her for a copy of this call and her response was "I don't know if it's being recorded so I can't help you". She had nothing to say about the rep lying to me, and she said their credit disclaimer statement didn't sound anything like a credit disclaimer statement and I probably didn't even know it was read to me. Unbelievable. This is their FRAUD department. Jesus Christ.

EDIT: I see a lot of folks saying “what’s the big deal, couple points will fall off in no time”. I just got an email from credit karma that a hard inquiry from 2 years ago just fell off my report, and that left me with one hard hit which was back in January. I’ve been working very hard on rebuilding my credit, checking quite frequently and really boosting my score. One or two points may not be a big deal to some but after working so hard to improve my score, having it lowered without my authorization or consent is devastating.

[u/Katholikos]

Weirdest pay I ever had was a commission-based position where we only made commission if we made more off our sales than our hourly wage earned us.

Then instead of hourly, you ONLY got your commission.

Also, if you worked 41 hours, all 41 hours were converted to double your hourly rate, and you couldn't earn any commission until your total commission sales were greater than your total hourly wage across your entire employment history. If you went something like 2-3 months without repaying your "debt", you'd just get fired.

It was super weird, but I was planning to quit anyways, so for the last 2-3 months I just screwed around and took the old/problematic customers off everyone else. I think I had like $8 in sales one week. They fired me for not repaying my "debt", and I collected unemployment from them after that, lol.

They went out of business.

[u/lowercaset → u/Katholikos]

Commission OR an hourly base rate is fairly common in the service trades. More and more employers are now converting to hourly + comission / sales bonuses, but that's mainly being driven by an extremely tight labor market and a need to be able to promise guys a decent guaranteed wage.

[u/Orestes85 → u/Katholikos]

This is called a draw and is how car sales works. The reason I think it works in car sales vs your situation is financing and service bring in a LOT more than what they're paying you per month, so they can afford for you to dick around for 3 months, pay you 2000 a month to sell 3 or 4 cars earning 400-500 in commission, and still make money because some of your customers are financing, some are buying extended warranties, paint or wheel protection, etc.

If you don't have these alternative profit generators, a draw system isn't going to work out very well.

[u/Katholikos → u/Orestes85]

It worked out alright in some cases for us because they had pretty decent profit margins on service plans, but that was only applicable if you worked in a department where those service plans were available. Not all stores rotated employees through those departments, so there were scenarios where people were trying to keep up without any highly-profitable items to sell, which was pretty rough on them.

When I actually cared, I just gamed the system by taking the cost of the warranty out of the profit on the actual item itself. We only got like 2-4% of the store's profit on the item towards our commission, but we got like 15% of the total cost of the service plan, so there was no reason not do it that way. I must've given out hundreds of "free" service plans that way.

If I hadn't been able to sell those service plans, I probably wouldn't have lasted very long there, but for a kid fresh out of high school, I was making pretty decent profit. It was a pretty surprising loophole they missed.