You Can Look-up Automotive-recalls Here, But Should You Need To?

I believe auto manufacturers do have to notify all owners of any recalls, but sites like the one you mentioned are helpful when it comes to used vehicles. If a prior owner of a vehicle got a recall notice on a vehicle but never had the recall taken care of, you would not know that as a later owner of the vehicle. So that's when sites like this come in handy, so you can look up your vehicle to make sure prior owners took care of the recalls like they should have. Recalls are a very important part of auto maintenance, and vehicle owners should take them seriously!

I once got a recall notice on a car I owned, something with the gear shifter sliding out of park or drive, something like that. So I called a dealer beforehand to set up an appointment to have it looked at. The parts manager was kind of rude on the phone, and then when I took it there, they sent out one of the mechanics who just sat in my vehicle and moved the shifter through the gears. He got out and said it was fine. So I said, I don't need to do anything then about the recall?, and he said no. I didn't buy that for a minute. I took it to another dealership in a different town a week later and they repaired the vehicle per the recall standards. I complained to the manufacturer about the first dealership, and I will never take a vehicle there for service again. So make sure you get it taken care of, even when they don't want to do the work!

 

I'm not sure, it's been so long since I took driver's ed=) It would be nice if the carfax information or similar sites would show a problem on the vehicle's record if a recall hasn't been taken care of (maybe they do already?). That would help new buyers know before buying a car if it has an unresolved recall too, plus it would motivate owners to take care of the recalls more if they knew they might have trouble selling it with an unresolved recall on the car's carfax information.

 

I don't think that anybody should have to look at a list to see if their vehicle is on it or not. Sometimes, the faults that are on cars can be rather dangerous, and if you don't know that the list exists then you might never know that the fault is there, causing you to carry on driving around in that car. If you are harmed because of a fault, then it is very wrong indeed that you were not told about it when they could have found you based on your registration details.

 

My Toyota starts really rough once in a while, and I went to one of the auto boards and found out there was a service bulletin to fix the problem. Toyota never bothered letting customers know about the problem... when I brought the car in to a dealer, they refused to fix it because "the bulletin expired two weeks ago"... Arguing with the manager did nothing.

I like my car, but I hate dealing with Toyota dealers - my experiences with things like that have made me rethink getting a Toyota for my next car.