What’s the best way to verify that a car is in good shape to buy with say something like eBay? Pictures are one thing, but not being able to see it and when you’re required to pay in x amount of days… it makes it rather difficult to verify the cars condition. Say you’re buying from California, but live in Chicago with nobody in CA you know that could check it out for you before the car is shipped to you.
At Cartalk.com, you can find a recommended local mechanic who, for a fee, will check out the vehicle for you.
Your question is one that lots of people have had – enough, in fact, to warrant the establishment of:
http://www.carchex.com/inspect/
It’s pretty affordable and – from the reports I’ve seen – pretty reliable.
By the way, there are two aspects to “inspecting” the car. One, does it seem cosmetically okay, are any parts visibly broken/non-functioning, etc. That’s where the “155 point inspection” comes in, and should tell you if there are any overt performance/functionality problems.
The second and equally important question is the vehicle history record search. A surprising number of shady characters make a living selling cars that have been sold as scrapped, or that have flood damage. It’s possible to fix these up cosmetically, but once a car has been that messed up, it is bound to have long-term problems that show up later. State recordkeeping requirements for car titles are pretty stringent, so a good service that traces the title history will rule out some of the more glaring problems.