Affiliate disclosure: One first-party hop may appear.
Refinance shopping is where people stack hards without noticing. The sequence that does not stack: read the current note (APR, remaining principal, prepayment rule), then collect soft-prequal estimates, then submit one full application. The sequence that does stack: five see-my-rate buttons that each hide a hard pull. Desk time 12 September 2026: 18 min reading prequal versus apply copy. Applications submitted: 0.
What to copy off the current note first
Remaining principal, current APR, remaining term, whether extra principal actually reduces principal, and any prepayment penalty. A $10,000 remainder at 12.99% APR with 28 months left is a different refinance than the same remainder at 18%. If extra payments were applied to next due instead of principal, the remaining term is longer than you think. Ask the servicer for a payoff letter dated this week. Payoff letters go stale.
Soft window, then one hard
Soft prequal lets a lender match your file without a hard. The landing page must say so. When you pick one offer, the full application is usually a hard. Cluster that hard with any same-product hards inside a few days if you must compare two finalists. Do not hard-pull a credit card, an auto refinance, and a personal refinance in the same week and call it one window.
Labeled worksheet only: current 12.99% APR, candidate 9.99% APR on $10,000 remaining, 24 months. Interest delta in the worksheet is real only after origination and any payoff fee. A $300 origination on a $400 interest save is a loss. We did not receive a live 9.99% quote on this date.
Cons / limitations
- Soft-prequal screens still expire; the hard-pull APR can be worse.
- Payoff letters expire; do not refinance from last quarter balance.
- Extra-principal settings at the servicer can undo the math.
- This hop is a consumer listing, not your current servicer.
Desk metrics (12 September 2026)
- Read time: 18 min
- Hard pulls by this desk: 0
- Labeled current APR in the worksheet: 12.99%
- Labeled candidate APR in the worksheet: 9.99%
- Example remainder: $10,000
Payoff-letter arithmetic
Ask the servicer for a payoff good through a named date. If today remainder is $10,000 at 12.99% APR and 28 months remain, the labeled candidate at 9.99% APR for 24 months only wins if origination plus any payoff fee is smaller than the interest delta. Interest delta in a napkin worksheet is not TILA. Compute both finance charges from the boxes. If extra principal was set to advance due date, call and switch it to reduce principal before you refinance; otherwise you are refinancing a longer remaining term than you budgeted.
Soft-prequal APRs expire. If the soft screen said 9.99% on Monday and the hard application on Thursday prints 11.49%, believe Thursday. Do not hard-pull three lenders on Thursday, Friday, and the following month. Cluster the finalists.
When a written payoff letter exists, compare new installment terms via personal-loan listings. Confirm the next click is a soft estimate before you submit.
Questions this desk actually gets
Does a soft prequal lock 9.99% APR? No. The lock, if any, is a separate document with an expiry. Is a payoff letter the same as a TILA box on the new note? No. One is what you owe now; the other is what you will owe if you originate. Can extra principal be reversed after a refinance? Only if it was never applied to principal. Call the servicer and ask which bucket last month extra $400 hit. If it hit next due, you bought a skip, not a shorter term. That skip can make the refinance look better than it is because the remaining term is understated.
If two finalists both want a hard pull, do them on the same calendar week and log the product type as personal refinance, not misc credit. If a third lender emails you three weeks later, that hard is a new event. This desk submitted zero applications, so we cannot paste a 2026 adverse-action letter. The method still holds.
One more dated check: if the current servicer extra-principal setting cannot be confirmed in a recorded call or a secure message, assume extras bought a skip. Refinance math that needs a shorter remaining term then fails. Wait for the written setting, then shop. Sixteen extra minutes on a servicer chat is cheaper than a 2-year term you did not need. This desk did not chat a live servicer on 12 September 2026, so we cannot quote a hold-time. The $400 extra-principal question still belongs in that chat.
Write the servicer chat date next to the payoff-letter date. If they differ by more than seven days, request a new payoff. Seven days of interest on $10,000 at 12.99% APR is not huge, but a stale letter plus a new origination is how closings miss. Eighteen minutes of reading plus a later 16-minute chat is the whole method.