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View Poll Results: How much would you contribute to get a US 1M History Report
Up to $50 2 15.38%
Up to $20 2 15.38%
Up to $10 0 0%
Don't you have anything better to do? 9 69.23%
Voters: 13. You may not vote on this poll

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      02-24-2018, 01:33 PM   #1
analogue
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How much would you donate to get history on all US 1Ms?

So I had a crazy idea after doing the options spreadsheet. What if I could pull the VIN histories of the 740 cars in the US and provide a sheet with stats like # of clean titles, average mileage, # of owners, open recalls, etc.

This is all seems doable except the cost is a bit more than I'm willing to foot. The cheapest way I have found is through Autocheck. They let you order 300 VIN histories for $100, meaning I need $300 to do this.

You know how this stuff goes, so I really need you to be honest about paying up if you vote that way. What I can offer is that people who contribute would get the full VIN report for their car. That alone would cost $25, so contributing at the $20 level would save you $5 if you wanted a report anyway.

And of course if someone has a dealer contact who could run these without additional costs, I'm all ears. I've talked to more than one of my contacts and it seems everyone still pays by volume, or won't admit they have unlimited access.
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      02-24-2018, 01:42 PM   #2
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And for consideration of the Canada crew, tack on another $100 to the project cost to get those additional cars loaded. It seems like Autocheck provides info on Canadian cars, but I won't know for sure until I try it.
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      02-24-2018, 03:16 PM   #3
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In for $50.
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      02-24-2018, 05:43 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by SLC801 View Post
In for $50.
See your $50 and raise by $25 :-)





just kidding :-)
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      02-24-2018, 05:50 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by champignon View Post
See your $50 and raise by $25 :-)





just kidding :-)

We get it, you’re a millionaire
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      02-24-2018, 05:51 PM   #6
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Most of us could probably supply you with the information on our own cars for free. Some of us (myself included) have Carfax's or Autocheck reports we obtained when buying the car 2nd hand or possibly obtained when we bought a package of reports while looking for another car.

No one should trust this sort of data from your spreadsheet when it comes to buying a used 1M later anyway, so if someone here lied, I don't think it would effect anything other than our "fun stats." I would put the caveat on the spreadsheet that the data, or some of the data, was user supplied and could not be verified.

Carfax and Autocheck reports are certainly worth obtaining when buying a used car, but I would not rely on them 100% for proving that a car has a clear title or that it was never wrecked. Some of the service reported is also misleading. I took a car in some time ago for PDR of a small ding, and that visit got reported as though it were scheduled maintenance on the Carfax.
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      02-24-2018, 08:40 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by analogue View Post
So I had a crazy idea after doing the options spreadsheet. What if I could pull the VIN histories of the 740 cars in the US and provide a sheet with stats like # of clean titles, average mileage, # of owners, open recalls, etc.

This is all seems doable except the cost is a bit more than I'm willing to foot. The cheapest way I have found is through Autocheck. They let you order 300 VIN histories for $100, meaning I need $300 to do this.

You know how this stuff goes, so I really need you to be honest about paying up if you vote that way. What I can offer is that people who contribute would get the full VIN report for their car. That alone would cost $25, so contributing at the $20 level would save you $5 if you wanted a report anyway.

And of course if someone has a dealer contact who could run these without additional costs, I'm all ears. I've talked to more than one of my contacts and it seems everyone still pays by volume, or won't admit they have unlimited access.
If you could make up a questionnaire that was formatted so that you could cut and paste the answers into your spreadsheet, I bet you could get a lot of information from forum members. In addition, even if you go the route of buying Autocheck or Carfax reports, data such as the # of owners is often, maybe more often than not, incorrect. You would have to read through the reports and edit it for each car. This is because they frequently count a dealer who bought the used car as one of the owners, and a car that has 5 or 6 reported owners might really only have had 2 or 3. They also, sometimes, under-count the number, especially if the car doesn't change states when it is resold. Reported mileage can be way off, usually because certain dealers and service locations do not report to these reporting companies. If you looked at the Carfaxs for my BMWs, you would think they haven't been serviced since I bought them, when in fact they are regularly serviced however my BMW dealer just doesn't report to Carfax, except possibly when they can't avoid it such as when a car is resold (but it may be the DMV that is reporting this information in that case). The DMV sometimes does not put the mileage on the title and records when a car is resold, especially and almost always with cars older than 10 years, or it may go on the title but not get reported to these agencies. Frequently, erroneous mileage numbers get reported that can make it look way high or way low, or even that the odometer was rolled back, when in fact someone just made a typo. Then the owner, if he is aware of it, has to go through a difficult process to get Carfax or Autocheck to correct the error. Of course, if the owner is unaware of this then he or she won't try to get it corrected.

The result can be huge gaps in the data and you could buy a report on a car and literally have no entries for the last several years. I just looked at the last Carfax I had generated on my 1M, which was in June of 2017. The last entry is dated 7/13/2015, almost exactly 2 years prior to the date of the report. In the interim, the car has been serviced several times, and the registration renewed, but there is no record of any of this.

Garbage in, garbage out, as in the old saying.
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      02-24-2018, 09:53 PM   #8
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All valid points, and this wouldn't be an attempt at a source of truth. Clearly it becomes stale data as soon if not before it is even posted. It would be statistical trivia for the 7th anniversary of the 1M. And maybe it would be better to just list summary stats and skip a detailed spreadsheet. I really just wanted to see if there was enough interest to share the cost to try this.

Obviously there are inaccuracies on Autocheck reports, but I would argue that the statistics from this method would be better than extrapolating the responses from a small group of owners on this forum. I doubt we'd get more than 50 responses if I asked for the data that way.

So that is why option 4 exists on the poll. We can move on waiting for the next thread asking what your current mileage is, or how many 1Ms have been totaled, somehow thinking more than 50 people will respond. Or I can tell you what NMVTIS and Autocheck says about all of the cars today.
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      02-24-2018, 11:48 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by analogue View Post
All valid points, and this wouldn't be an attempt at a source of truth. Clearly it becomes stale data as soon if not before it is even posted. It would be statistical trivia for the 7th anniversary of the 1M. And maybe it would be better to just list summary stats and skip a detailed spreadsheet. I really just wanted to see if there was enough interest to share the cost to try this.

Obviously there are inaccuracies on Autocheck reports, but I would argue that the statistics from this method would be better than extrapolating the responses from a small group of owners on this forum. I doubt we'd get more than 50 responses if I asked for the data that way.

So that is why option 4 exists on the poll. We can move on waiting for the next thread asking what your current mileage is, or how many 1Ms have been totaled, somehow thinking more than 50 people will respond. Or I can tell you what NMVTIS and Autocheck says about all of the cars today.
First, let me say that I appreciate your efforts; thank you for all the work you have done on this.

As someone who has actually purchased 8 (at last count) used or vintage cars in the last several years, I can tell you that only 1 of them (actually, my 1M prior to my purchase) had an approximately correct Carfax, and it came out of Canada, where I am thinking that they may have higher legal standards for this sort of data than we have in the USA. In the mix was a totally rusted out Z3 Coupe sold to me as a pristine car, whose Carfax gave no clue that the vehicle was in horrid condition and worth essentially zero. I filed a lawsuit over that car's misrepresentations. The car went back, cross country, to the seller in the end. None of this will show up on a Carfax or Autocheck report; the car, sold private party, was never registered by me, and I spend many months in trying to force the lying seller to take the rusted out hulk back.

If the data source that you want to consult was even vaguely accurate, I would be four square in favor with what you want to do. In fact, the data is extremely misleading, and any conclusions you draw from it will be highly suspect.

I can understand your reluctance to take the data that you can collect from forum members here, and perhaps on other forums if they exist. I do think, that as limited a sample as you might get here, will be more accurate when extrapolated than what you will get from compiling unverified and unverifiable data obtained from this public source.

The 1M is a very limited production enthusiast car. I would suggest that almost no one owns one who is very dissimilar to the people posting on this forum. I would also suggest that there are tons of lurkers here, as in any other forum. You may be surprised with the number of responses that you get.
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Last edited by champignon; 02-25-2018 at 12:55 AM.. Reason: tyypo
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      02-25-2018, 12:01 AM   #10
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Now who has nothing better to do?
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      03-02-2018, 08:09 AM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by champignon View Post
I can tell you that only 1 of them (actually, my 1M prior to my purchase) had an approximately correct Carfax, and it came out of Canada, where I am thinking that they may have higher legal standards for this sort of data than we have in the USA. In the mix was a totally rusted out Z3 Coupe sold to me as a pristine car, whose Carfax gave no clue that the vehicle was in horrid condition and worth essentially zero.
I was not aware that Carfax gave a representation of the condition of the car. Are you possibly thinking of another service?

From the Carfax website, carfax checks for

Title information, including salvaged or junked titles
Flood damage history
Total loss accident history
Odometer readings
Lemon history
Number of owners
Accident indicators, such as airbag deployments
State emissions inspection results
and Service records
and Vehicle use (taxi, rental, lease, etc.)

So it sounds like your beef was with the seller...

and to add to this thread, I think it would be great to know how many 1Ms are still on the road! (i.e. not ever totaled) and yes, I know both of those services are not 100% accurate, but they are better than polling this group.
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      03-02-2018, 02:15 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by doug_999 View Post
I was not aware that Carfax gave a representation of the condition of the car. Are you possibly thinking of another service?

From the Carfax website, carfax checks for

Title information, including salvaged or junked titles
Flood damage history
Total loss accident history
Odometer readings
Lemon history
Number of owners
Accident indicators, such as airbag deployments
State emissions inspection results
and Service records
and Vehicle use (taxi, rental, lease, etc.)

So it sounds like your beef was with the seller...

and to add to this thread, I think it would be great to know how many 1Ms are still on the road! (i.e. not ever totaled) and yes, I know both of those services are not 100% accurate, but they are better than polling this group.
The car I'm writing about was in the right place to have been damaged by Hurricane Katrina, and in our lawsuit we did question whether it was flood damaged, with salt water.

In any event, the car was a rolling (slightly) garbage heap. If some would like to count a car like this as "running and on the roads" and in good condition overall as implied by its Carfax, then I guess that Carfax data is worth more than i personally think it is.

I would not mind finding out what the current status of the "rolling stock" of 1Ms is, however I would not personally consider what you could divine from a bunch of Carfax or Autocheck reports to be worth all that much. If the data is dated and unreliable in the case of a given car, then I don't think that an amalgamation of such data is all that useful, either.

Just my opinion.
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      03-02-2018, 07:29 PM   #13
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I agree with champignon's statement about carfax and autocheck. It is far from the end all be all and in fact many things are easily missed be it intentionally or not by the seller. Buyer beware.

Thank you OP for your efforts. I do not know what will come of it but it is admirable.
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      03-02-2018, 11:46 PM   #14
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I agree with champignon's statement about carfax and autocheck. It is far from the end all be all and in fact many things are easily missed be it intentionally or not by the seller. Buyer beware.
????

Once again, they guarantee that the car will not have one of the issues they cover and if it does, they will make it right. I'm still at a loss as to how he (or she) thinks that they even comment on the condition of the car. Look to Mannheim if you want that info.

Quote:
Originally Posted by champignon View Post
In any event, the car was a rolling (slightly) garbage heap. If some would like to count a car like this as "running and on the roads" and in good condition overall as implied by its Carfax, then I guess that Carfax data is worth more than i personally think it is.
Once again, Carfax does not imply any condition of a car. Please show me this - it might be new, and maybe I missed it, because it all the Carfax reports I've seen, nothing has ever been "implied". I've pointed out what they list and if it is not on there, then it is not on there - once again, they are not perfect (I know people who have clean carfaxes with accidents) - but they never state the "condition" of the car. Just the publicly available information.
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      03-03-2018, 01:29 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by doug_999 View Post
????

Once again, they guarantee that the car will not have one of the issues they cover and if it does, they will make it right. I'm still at a loss as to how he (or she) thinks that they even comment on the condition of the car. Look to Mannheim if you want that info.



Once again, Carfax does not imply any condition of a car. Please show me this - it might be new, and maybe I missed it, because it all the Carfax reports I've seen, nothing has ever been "implied". I've pointed out what they list and if it is not on there, then it is not on there - once again, they are not perfect (I know people who have clean carfaxes with accidents) - but they never state the "condition" of the car. Just the publicly available information.
OK, then you think that the "publicly available information" on 700-odd (or almost 1000, counting Canadian) cars is worth more than I think it is worth.

As to the "guarantee" from Carfax or Autocheck, I would suggest that it is worth about as much as the ebay guarantee is worth on cars sold through that platform. I once thought I might have to file a claim on that (ebay) guarantee, and found out quickly that the guarantee terms are so full of holes that they make Swiss Cheese look solid :-)
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