In attempting to refinance my student loans into a variable rate I was preliminarily approved at Lendkey. In order to proceed I had to acknowledge that I may be required to open an account and that my credit ( soft hit ) would be pulled to conditionally approve me and send to a lender that fit my criteria which I was fine with. Once my preliminary credit ( soft hit ) was run they sent me to the XXXX Credit Bureau out of XXXX XXXX. The XXXX XXXX XXXX ran my credit ( hard hit ), approved me and then sent me a link to open the account that was necessary. When clicking on the link it required that I either be a 1. employee, retiree, or family member of an XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, 2. Live, work, or go to school within Washington XXXX, or 3. Pay a membership fee to XXXX of the XXXX organizations that they support. When I called XXXX they stated that a person should not be really referred to them unless I met criteria XXXX or XXXX. While I was willing to open an account and keep a minimum balance or otherwise I was not willing to pay a membership fee to join the credit union to have an account when the purpose of the loan was to save money each month not to turn around and pay it back out to an organization. When I contacted Lendkey back they stated that they do not in any way monitor the requirements to open an account for the credit unions they work with and could not send me to another lender since I wanted a variable rate XXXX was the only one that qualified. If I did n't qualify for an account at the places I was eligible ( AgFed the only XXXX in this case ) and if additional fees to get an account would be required then this should have been disclosed upfront since I would n't have agreed to it early on and would have withdrawn my application on my own prior to my credit bureau ( hard hit ) being pulled. Since my credit had been pulled my score has thus dropped because of the inquiry. Therefore Lendkey misled me as a consumer and had no other options when the only credit union they could send me to was going to cost additional fees. They said if I was n't willing to proceed they would withdraw my application which of course they did after I said I was n't willing to pay fees to an organization I was n't interested in. 
