You’ve probably heard about Carfax (and similar services, including AutoCheck and EpicVIN) that offer “vehicle history reports” which search state motor vehicle and insurance records using the car’s vehicle identification number (VIN) sussing out potentially radioactive problems such as major accident damage that may not have been disclosed by the seller.
These services typically charge $30 or so for a single vehicle report – or (in some case) you can buy a subscription that lets you check multiple vehicles for a set price. Epic – a newcomer – charges the least: $7.99 per report (with a supplementary auction report that covers wholesale auctions, where title skulduggery is more common, available for an additional $2.99).
[amazon asin=B000E9QF0Q&template=*lrc ad (left)]Well, is it money well-spent?
Generally, yes – but in the same way that a radar detector is worth the money. In both cases, there’s no absolute guarantee that you’ll avoid a problem. But it’s fair to say it’s guaranteed your chances of having a problem will be reduced.
Here’s the deal:
Your car’s VIN is comparable to your Social Security number. It’s a unique to the vehicle and used to record and track information about the car from its date of manufacture forward. If you look at your title and registration paperwork – as well as your insurance [amazon asin=B00CFALFXY&template=*lrc ad (right)]paperwork – it will have the vehicle’s VIN. This means such things as date of original sale and subsequent sales to new owners (if any) ought to be on record. Also the mileage at each sale, which can be very helpful in terms of sussing out odometer fraud.
The latter is one of the major “worth it” factors here. If, for instance, a report uncovers a disparity between the mileage a used car has today vs. what it had three years ago (i.e., the advertised mileage now is 58,326 but three years ago it was 158,326) you’ve just [amazon asin=B0007RDVH0&template=*lrc ad (left)]saved yourself a lot of trouble for less than the cost of less than half a tankful of gas.
Another big one is evidence of a “salvage” title.
What’s a “salvage” title? It’s issued to the owner of a vehicle whose car was considered a total loss by the insurance company, as the result of accident or flood (or similarly extensive) damage. What sometimes happens is the insurance company will cut a check for a certain amount, but leave it up to the owner to either repair the car or throw it away and use the money to buy a replacement car. If[amazon asin=B000HCUM6I/&template=*lrc ad (right)] the car is fixed so that it appears to have never been damaged and then re-sold, one of the ways of finding out that it was previously damaged is via the vehicle history search – and evidence of a “salvage” title on file.
However, it’s not guaranteed that a previously damaged vehicle will be identified as such.
For instance, if a vehicle is in a major accident but the damage is not reported to the insurance company (no claim filed) and the owner has three car fixed on his own, there will be no record of the damage for the vehicle history report to find. A report run on such a car will come back “clean” – even though the vehicle had in fact been badly wrecked. Also, laws vary state to state, with loopholes making if possible to “wash” a damaged car’s history by shipping it from one state and re-titling it in another.
This is why it’s important to double check.
