Important Questions to Ask When Buying a Used Car.

“Important questions to ask when Buying a Used Car.”

Welcome to Mercie J Auto Care, Where Compassion and Craftsmanship Come Together. I'm Rick Smith, ASE Certified Master Technician. The research I did shows that in 2019 the average price of a used vehicle was $21,000. With the size of the investment, we need to be wise as buyers.

The advantage to buying from a private party is we don’t have to pay tax which on average is close to $1700.00. With a private party will the seller be there tomorrow if we have a complaint? Scary stuff. What about buying from a dealership, car lot, or one of the big online companies. What are the risks there? You may think that buying from one of the big name companies means that a good thorough inspection was performed on the vehicle. We are short about 70,000 qualified technicians in the United States, so there are inspections being performed with the best of intentions, but things can be missed In our shop, we had two separate occasions where the vehicle being purchased had a clean car fax report, but we found evidence of flood damage that was missed during the inspection by the seller. In both cases, the business worked with our clients and put them into another car. So it is very important to always have an experienced, qualified technician look at the vehicle first. If the seller won’t allow that to happen, then that should be a red flag. There are plenty of cars out there, so move on to the next one. Lastly, do a brief inspection yourself before you even pay to have a professional do it. You can come by Mercie J and I’ll show you how to do that and you can also watch the videos we made to help. Until next time, safe travels and blessings to you.