- Always check a cars background-In this day and age, this should be an automatic impulse. You should never go out to buy a vehicle without checking its background. Both NICB and CarFax offer free online tools to help spot Hurricane Sandy’s totaled vehicles. With NICB’s VINCheck program, you can check the vehicles history and find out if it comes from a flood background by discovering if the car has been deemed totaled or stolen. With CarFax offers basically the same thing but you will have to pay $40+ dollars to find out the most detailed information like Hurricane Sandy info. Keep in mind that neither of these tools are foolproof as they depend on the honest input. Each have their flaws, as an example, NICB’s database does not include uninsured vehicles and lacks information on about 12% of insured ones. Still, any bit of information that you can get will help you make smarter choices.
- Bring your mechanic to check the vehicle-Obviously not all consumers are mechanics, and pretending that you are a mechanic of sorts will only hurt you in the long run. When you are planning on purchasing a vehicle, grab someone that is a paid mechanic. There are many backyard mechanics but the special things that are being considered after Hurricane Sandy won’t be known to an untrained mechanic. Don’t take any chances. Hopefully you are friends with one because the cost to take a car to a skilled mechanic is somewhere around $100. It would seem that everyone is trying to get in on the Hurricane Sandy fallout. Another warning to watch for, if you tell the seller that you want to run the car over to your mechanics shop so that they can take a look at it and the sellers face turns red and panicked, then let that serve as a sign that this is a crook. Another sign is when you say you want to take it to your mechanic and they say that this low price is a limited time offer, run. This is a scam.