boomka's Journal: asking for a car insurance quote can harm your credit rating

Now this is just WEIRD! I simply wanted to know what kind of rate GEICO could give me on car insurance so I went to their web site, punched in some info, and got their quote. Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? Everything seemed so transparent, too.

A few hours later, I get this email from them:
FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT NOTICE

As a result of your recent rate quote or renewal, we obtained information about you from the consumer reporting agency listed below. That information was used in combination with other factors to determine the rate that you were provided.
Since we may have been able to offer you a lower rate had the report been more favorable, we treat our decision as an adverse action under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The specific information provided by Trans Union that may have influenced our decision is:
-Insufficient length of credit history (-)
-Too many recent credit checks (-)

Get this, not only they did not warn me that they would pull my report, they treat this as an adverse action - because, according to them, they might have offered me a better rate had my credit been better (isn't that always the case??) duh! Well if that's how they want to do business, I will make sure they don't do any with me.

Not that they seriously harmed me in any way, I just think that this whole thing is exceptionally rude. If you can, stay away from GEICO. My current insurance company certainly never did anything like that.