Checking The Vehicle History Before Purchase
For 5 million used-car buyers each year, the unfortunate answer is yes. These unwitting victims and their families are at risk for costly, frustrating and even life-threatening breakdowns.
People purchasing these vehicles lose much more than their money. Their safety could be at stake. And with an estimated 25 million problem vehicles now on U.S. roads, used-car fraud truly threatens us all.
While state consumer protections vary, it's basically "let the buyer beware" in the used-car market. You have to become educated as salesmen often know more about their product than they're likely to let on. Here are three of the most common used-car scams:
Each year U.S. drivers total some 2.2 million vehicles - but about half find their way back onto the road, often patched up on the cheap and rolled across state lines to obtain a deceptively clean title. Salvage fraud is the worst problem that used-car buyers face today. And these poorly rebuilt autos can be perilously unsound. Hundreds of thousands of water-damaged vehicles float onto the market each year, perhaps 20,000 just from last year's Hurricane Floyd. While artfully cleaned up to conceal their ordeal, such autos are never safe again - because dashboard-high waters can silently undermine anti-lock brakes, power steering and restraint systems. A flooded air bag deploys 10 times slower than normal," explains one veteran auto recycler. Your face hits the steering wheel by then. Odometer tamperers, or "clockers," may cost consumers up to $10 billion yearly in inflated prices - and can dangerously mislead them about the true condition of their purchase. One study found that SUVs and former company cars are now among clockers' favorite targets, with the average rollback more than 20,000 miles.
Vehicle History
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