Consumer Car Buying Advice Blog

Bad credit car loan buyers may not be as familiar with Experians AutoCheck as they are with Carfax but recent research indicates that AutoCheck reports contain more accident data and could be a more valuable buying for credit challenged customers

Bad credit and used cars

Rebuilding your credit can be difficult. At our company, Auto Credit Express, we’ve spent the past 20 years working with consumers who have bad credit by directing them to our online bad credit auto loan application where they can finance a vehicle through a nationwide network of dealers that specialize in second chance auto loans. Unlike tote the note dealers, the lenders these dealers work with report payment histories to the credit bureaus and, if you have bad credit, can help you reestablish you car credit while raising your FICO scores.

In working with credit-challenged consumers, we have come to believe that one of the keys to successfully reestablishing your auto credit is an understanding of the credit repair process. We also sometimes think that the phrase “caveat emptor” was coined specifically for used car buyers. Like the Latin phrase for “let the buyer beware” suggests, the used car market is often a minefield. It just sits there, looking like any other meadow, until you happen to step in the wrong place and then – well, you can see where this is leading.

Whether you have good credit or if you plan on buying a used car with auto loans for bad credit, there are a number of tools a used car buyer has at his or her disposal. One of the most important of these resources is the vehicle history report. There are a number of companies that sell these reports with the two largest being Carfax and AutoCheck. But even though these two reports appear to be very similar, there are major differences in how they are marketed as well as the amount of information they contain.

Carfax versus AutoCheck

The difference between these two sites is immediately apparent from their respective web sites. Where the Carfax site seems to scream out the message “Buying a Used Car? Just Say – Show Me the CARFAX®!” the AutoCheck site methodically explains what their reports are based on.

The AutoCheck web site also features an additional useful tool – the “AutoCheck” score. This score numerically compares the car you are looking at to similar cars and, like a credit score, distills that information down so that it can be easily understood for comparison purposes.

But the differences don’t stop there. According to a recent study conducted by Pipal Research, there is also a big discrepancy in the basic accident data that is found in each report.

Cost considerations

With all this additional data, you might expect to pay more for an AutoCheck report than for a Carfax® vehicle history report. Here again, you may be surprised to learn that the AutoCheck report is actually less expensive than a Carfax report.

Looking at the AutoCheck web site as well as the one from Carfax® on July 15th of 2010, we found that Carfax® charged $34.99 for a single report, while you could purchase one from AutoCheck for $29.99 – a savings of $5.00 or 14%.

In all fairness, we should point out that you can purchase a total of 5 Carfax® reports for just $10.00 more and you can run these reports any time within 60 days of purchase. But here, again, AutoCheck beats this program by offering an unlimited number of reports over the same 60 day period for the same $44.95 price.

Use it

So if Experian’s AutoCheck reports contain more accident information and, at the same time, cost less, why would anyone contemplating buying a used car and financing it using car loans with bad credit consider anything but the AutoCheck report?

But whatever your decision turns out to be, AutoCheck or Carfax, be sure to run a vehicle history report on any used car you are thinking of buying. Although these reports don’t always contain all the historical information on a particular vehicle, they can certainly be helpful in forming a basis for your buying decision.

But there also are other things that you can do to finish filling in the rest of the pieces of the puzzle concerning a vehicle’s history.

An inspection

Once you’ve checked out the report on the car’s history and it appears that the vehicle is clean, you should then ask the seller or dealer if you can take it and have it inspected (if they refuse, walk away from the deal). You should then take it to a certified mechanic – preferably one who is an ASE certified master mechanic.

In addition to individual mechanics, there are also companies that employ certified mechanics that specialize in used car inspections. This service normally runs between $100 and $200, but you should consider it money well spent, as a car with hidden damage could cost you thousands of dollars in repair bills as well as a lower resale value.

The resale issue could be a real problem especially if you’re financing your car with a bad credit auto loan, since the additional negative equity could make it much more difficult to roll out of your current high-interest bad credit auto loan and into a different car with a better loan rate before the loan is paid off.

The bottom line

Whether you choose AutoCheck of Carfax, a vehicle history report, when used properly, can be a valuable tool in making a used car buying decision, especially when it comes to determining whether or not your next vehicle will be a cherry or a lemon.

Here at Auto Credit Express, we specialize in placing customers with bad credit with dealers that can help them. Our affiliate dealers are knowledgeable and will treat you with the same high respect that they treat every customer that walks through their doors. If you have any questions that our web site can’t answer, feel free to call us at the toll free number listed on every page.

So if you are serious about getting your credit back on track, why not begin a new chapter in your life by filling out our bad credit car loan application.

Tags: auto credit, autocheck, Bad Credit, car credit, carfax, credit, credit bureau, Credit Repair, credit score, experian, fico, FICO score, vehicle history report

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