Avoiding Branded Title or Damaged Vehicles

[Matt Parsons]

OK, tons of articles out there in the press about vehicles coming out of the 'Hurricane Zones' and being shipped to other parts of the country for resale.

Here is my question, with several used vehicle history report services out there (CarFax, Auto Check), what is keeping a dealer from performing a vehicle history check on every used car they take in or sell? Why would you not provide this level of risk mitigation to yourself and your clients?

Curious to hear from dealers not using this type of service and their reasoning.

[pjpeery]

matt

here is a web site that you can put in a vin and it will tell you if it has been in a flood .. first page .. white box
http://www.nicb.org/

national insurance crime bureau

paul

[Matt Parsons]

I realize there are numerous companies that can provide this level of service, I am more interested in why dealers do not use something in this day and age? Seems awful risky to me for both the dealer and their client to sell used vehicles (or for that matter take one into your inventory) without having run some type of vehicle history report.

[spwilkins]

The products that offer information seem to be a good idea - except they do not have all the information that we as a dealership need to stand behind there claims. For example, many rental car fleets are self-insured and therefore do not report info. When a repair is made that is not covered by insurance, a "shade-tree" body shop repair can be made, again, without showing up on the reports. A question may be, if the repairs do not show up, is there real protection from the companies offering these services?

[fburrows]

Matt:

There is also a lag in the reporting process. The issue is that these services will catch some but not all of the problem vehicles. The only foolproof method is a physical inspection by a qualified individual for damage as well as lots of other potential problems.


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Frank Burrows
fburrows@absdata.com

[Matt Parsons]

Understood that none of these are perfect systems, but I have to believe that if you sell a unit that is later shown to have a problem and you can show that you had run a report as part of your business practice on every unit and inspected the car you would stand a much better chance of resolving the 'case' with minimal financial exposure.

Some dealers I speak to say well since the reports aren't perfect they don't use. This seems to be a case of using the best possible solution to minimize risk.

In addition, I would think you would have to show a way that you can assure every vehicle gets run versus spot checking.