Car history
If the thought of buying a second hand car fills you with dread, you are not alone. Stories abound of two vehicles being welded together to make one, stolen VIN numbers and heavily accident damaged vehicles being poorly repaired and sold to unsuspecting customers. Consumers have become wiser to these scams and with the internet at their disposal are now able to do VIN checks to get as much information on the vehicle that they are considering buying before making the decision to purchase.
Related: What are the cheapest second hand cars to Insure in South Africa?
AutoTrader offers a VIN check service that customers can use to do check-ups on vehicles that they are considering. The question is can you see how many owners a vehicle has had?
Unlike other countries such as the US with their CarFax service, Unfortunately here in South Africa with the VIN check, we are only able to see how many times the car has been financed but not to whom. Once the car has dropped out of finance eligibility, you would have to query the traffic department and that will take an unknown amount of time.
