Free Clunkers Check
by Steve Cypher on Friday, November 13th, 2009Carfax ups the ante by offering a free clunkers check on its web site
Information, not money (That’s what I want)
At Auto Credit Express, we know that, unlike the song originally sung by Barrett Strong, the best things in life are hardly free. We’ve also spent close to twenty years focusing on consumers with bad credit and helping these customers raise their FICO scores and reestablish their car credit by financing a vehicle with a bad credit auto loan. Along the way, we try to educate our applicants on the loan process, knowing that a bad credit car loan is probably one of the furthest things from a freebie.
We also know that most of these bad credit car loan applicants will end up purchasing a used car. Realizing this, we recently wrote a couple of articles about two vehicle history reports, Carfax and AutoCheck, adding “cash for clunkers” information to their databases.
Today, Carfax announced that it will be furnishing that “clunker” information at no charge to consumers.
Dumping clunkers on the open market
Government records indicate that close to 700,000 used vehicles were taken in as part of the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) or as it is more commonly known, the “cash for clunkers” program. Scrap yards that accepted these vehicles were required to subsequently destroy the engines and either crush the bodies or dismantle them for parts.
According to the press release from Carfax, “There is widespread concern that many of the used cars supposedly scrapped under the Cash for Clunkers program may be resold around the country.”
No charge for clunkers info
The release went on to state, “To help used car buyers protect themselves, Carfax now makes this information available for free at www.carfax.com/clunkers.”
The Bottom Line
At Auto Credit Express, we realize that with the high cost of bad credit car loans, bad credit car loan shoppers need to be extra careful when choosing a vehicle. By including the “cash for clunkers” information in their database and providing this information free of charge, Carfax is doing a great service to all used car shoppers by ensuring that the used vehicles these customers buy are not those that should, instead, either be in pieces or crushed beyond recognition.
Tags: auto loan, autocheck, bad credit, bad credit auto loan, bad credit car loan, car allowance rebate system, car loan, carfax, cars, cash for clunkers, fico, Fico Score
This is going to be a boon for Carfax now that there’s a new paranoia out there. I’ve always had a problem with the C4C program. Why are we flooding the market with thousands of new cars when we already have thousands of used and repossessed cars out there that nobody is buying. To me it seems like a waste, and like every Government program it’s getting abused at a cost to taxpayers.