Auto Checkers. The Vehicle Inspection Centre

Life Cars & Motorcycles
1

As some may have noticed, after all these years I finally added an avatar.

The reason being that I have finally expanded my business and have now started a new shiny one, hoping to cater for everyone needing to find or needing to check used cars on the island including locals as well as foreigners now.
Presently the English part and Russian part of the site is under construction, so please be patient, but this is really just to announce the new business and hope that people will take advantages of our services.

We help in sourcing vehicles, inspecting and writing reports on vehicles, as well as offer information regarding recent Taiwan driving news, servicing and maintenance as well as a consultancy for people who wish to understand more about vehicle choices and options in Taiwan.

I hope eventually the site will be useful for all, in the meantime, please feel free to check it out.

actaiwan.com/

2

Aye. Well. You look more like a model than a car bloke – assuming that the guy on the Website is you. If its NOT you, I’m guessing there are going to be a lot of very disappointed xiaojies coming around your place to get their bearings lubed.

3

is that your actual car?
actaiwan.com/checklist

and is that you checking the car?

4

[quote=“StreetSpec”]is that your actual car?
actaiwan.com/checklist

and is that you checking the car?[/quote]

Yes, it is on both accounts.

5

If that is really you in the pictures, I will sent my wife’s coworkers and friends and charge them an extra to get to look at you when you bend over the cars. Good looking man.

Just kidding (maybe it was still a good idea). I wish you the best in that venture. With your knowledge and the help you provide to us on forumosa, I would feel very confident to put my car into your hands.

IIX23

itsavideotv.com

Will send you a “pm” for a video interview idea later.

6

Sounds spiffy! Thanks for the nice comments!

7

Russian? There are Russians in Taiwan? :astonished:

:smiley:

8

[quote=“hannes”]Russian? There are Russians in Taiwan? :astonished:

:smiley:[/quote]

Haha. Not too many, but there are a few in Russia I’ve heard. Presently there are more and more Russian individuals and companies purchasing cars from Taiwan for export. Taiwan used cars are relatively low in mileage so many foreigners value their engines and transmitions. Export to Russia and 'stan countries is increasingly popular, but unfortunately the progress on that particular language function is slow and a little out of my control which is frustrating.

People are having to call me direct a lot of the time at present as the site is in a state of redesign even before the present one has been completed.

Sorry about that.

9

I have started a new thread for reviews of the services offered by Jamie at AUTOCHECKERS ( actaiwan.com/ ).

My short review is this:

I recently used Jamie’s services, and am extremely happy with his customer service, patience and the car he finally found for me. I highly recommend autocheckers to anyone who is considering buying a second hand car.

I paid the full 10000 fee for finding a car and checking it out, and from my end this has been a painless and pleasurable experience.

Jamie takes the hassle out of looking for and buying a used car. He takes care of everything from the beginning until the very end and he makes sure that the car is delivered in perfect condition when the money finally changes hands. His service is better than what I used to get from the A.A back in New Zealand.

My detailed review:

Having been made redundant from my school in Keelung I now need to start traveling to Taipei for my new job.

I contacted Jamie via email, and told him what I needed. A small, short car, preferably a hatchback, low on gas, easy to repair, and under 200K.

I suggested some cars that seemed to fit my needs (Suzuki Jimmy, Nippy, and Solio) and asked for his opinion.

Jamie emailed me back and suggested that I forget about the Jimmy and Nippy, but that the Solio was acceptable. He gave me some details about it (similar to the posts he makes in this forum), and also made some other suggestions, one of them being a Nissan March.

I initially was not interested in the March (I called it a ‘grandma car’), but after doing more reading about the Solio I changed my mind. The Solio reviews I read mention problems with the suspension, lack of power, and very unstable in strong winds (it is a light car).

So, I emailed Jamie, and confirmed that I wanted a March. Jamie started his search and after a week he emailed me and wrote that he had looked at a few Marches, but had not found anything suitable. Then on Wednesday he told me he was looking at another March on Thursday, and that it appeared to be very promising.

On Thursday afternoon I got an email with photos of 2 Marches. The cheaper one had some problems that the dealer would fix, and 50k on the clock (but Jamie thought it had the speedo adjusted).

The second one was 10K more expensive, but had one owner, was in immaculate condition, 80k on the clock (Speedo NOT adjusted) and was going for 178K. I told Jamie to go ahead and give that one the full check-up.

My problem was that I was flying out for a short vacation on Friday morning, so I would not be able to put a deposit down on it if the car passed Jamie’s test

Anyway, Jamie emailed me back on Thursday evening and said he identified some small problems, which the dealer had agreed to fix, and asked me if I wanted the car

I said yes, and Jamie then told me he would talk to dealer and ask if he could keep it for me until Monday.

Later that evening I got another email, and Jamie told me had had put down a 20K deposit for me.

This blew me away. I have never met Jamie, he knows nothing about me (except for me email address and phone number), and here he goes and puts down a 20K deposit on a car. I am sure that he could have found another buyer if I backed out, but personally I think this was an amazing bit of customer service.

So, I went on holiday, happy and relaxed, knowing that the car would be there for me on Monday.

On Monday evening we went to the car dealer and I paid Jamie his fee and the deposit, and gave the car dealer my ID so that they could transfer ownership.

I do not have a license yet (will get that during my one month holiday before I start at my new school). So, I asked Jamie if he could help arrange for the car dealer to deliver the car to me in Keelung.

He organized this, so I was expecting delivery on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday morning, the car dealer rang and said they could not do it on Tuesday, and maybe not even on Wednesday. I then rang Jamie, who contacted the car dealer and sorted out the problem.

On Tuesday evening Jamie and one of the salesmen drove to my house and dropped the car off, and Jamie drove the salesman back to the car yard in his car. Where can you find this kind of service, in Taiwan or anywhere? Fantastic, and much appreciated by me.

Jamie’s fee is well worth paying. It saved me endless trips to car dealers and private sellers, it took the uncertainty out of buying a second hand car, and he looked after me from the beginning until the VERY end.

I am now the happy owner of an immaculate 2002 Nissan March, with 80K on the clock, for NT178000.

10

Very nice review there. I admit I was a bit skeptical when I first heard how much this service costs, but after your testimonial, it really does seem to represent value for money and his willingness to got the extra mile for his clients is a nice added benefit.

11

Nice review, indeed. Thanks for the first-hand info, jands.

It would have saved us a lot of troubles when we bought a truck, that’s for sure. 10k to have someone proficient find a solid vehicle and, as mentioned by sandman, go the extra mile to make things go smooth, seems like a bargain to me. It’s the wise thing to do if you want to spend your money thoughtfully, and in terms of piece of mind, it’s simply priceless.

Well done, Jamie!

marboulette

12

Edited:

Kind words indeed jands and thank you very much. Thanks you everyone for your support at this time. The business is picking up quite nicely recently thanks to the support and trust of a growing number of mostly foreigners who have tried the service already or have heard of A.C. by word of mouth. I still cannot quite manage to operate full time though so some patience is appreciated when I can’t always be contacted. Hopefully in the future I will get to practice what I love doing full time, instead of the half and occasional full days I have at present.

Edited:

Of course being a foreigner myself, I appreciate fully what many of us expect to receive in terms of service and standards of course, as well as many of the frustrations we have met when dealing with the very typical Taiwan motor industry. It is because of this reason I have tried whenever possible to short cut much of the B.S. when interpreting sales personnel and technicians and their information and ways of dealing as it can otherwise be purely frustrating for most people.
Of course we may not be able to offer our services to absolutely everyone out there at this time and my area is sometimes limited because of time and economic restraints. I try to remind people that also our sourcing service may not always come up with results depending on the number and quality of specific types of vehicles. I do try when I can however to find vehicles that are requested, but only if they are viable requests that I believe can be fulfilled within our means. Of course no sourced vehicle means we take no payments however and I keep a stringent level of pass rate on any potential find out there. I won’t offer anything which cannot match the most stringent requirements and that’s a promise, or you’ll have your money back.
Of course don’t forget our most popular service which is the straight checking service. We provide a 200 point checklist to anyone who wishes to learn more about their prospective purchase, detailing the greatest significant status of almost any 4 wheeled road vehicle out there, which should help greatly reduce the purchase cost or after sales cost of a vehicle. It sounds like a made up figure I know, but approximately over 90% of the vehicles I check end up paying for the checking in the cost of the faults that are uncovered during the checks. A majority of garages that I have worked with are willing to manage repairs to vehicles, but only if they are found to be faulted before purchase. I have rarely encountered a customer that didn’t end up saving the cost of inspection from their intended vehicle purchase, either by managing to have repairs made or by walking away from a potentially bad purchase.

Once again, thank you all. I very much look forward to servicing the community more.

13

I have to bring up an important point that raised itself today. I have a customer who was until recently very happy with the service and took collection of a sourced vehicle by me. The vehicle was in very good condition and seemed a very genuine mileage because of its very good condition. It has turned out after the vehicle was taken in for a water leak leak repair that the mileage by the original manufacturers service records has been altered between the last service and when the vehicle was resold.
Although Auto Checkers offers no guarantee on mileage, I regret that the vehicle is not of original mileage and was not suspected at the time of inspection.
It is still not procedure for Auto Checkers to validate mileage through service centres as mileages are notoriously difficult to confirm, even when compared to service centre records, and may only be suspected if a vehicle does not conform to typical checks. It is still my policy that if a customer is not satisfied for any reasonable reason that I will return moneys paid for the service and this is still the case.

This only refers to the finding service as the finding service is not advertised on the Auto Checkers site as it is not a profitable service and is only meant to service the foreign community, which is also the reason I am putting this notice here on Forumosa.

I will be sure to inform more accurately the situation regarding mileages and odometers to future customers and I make a public apology in this case as I have failed to properly inform a customer of this situation and also failed to properly identify that an odometer had been adjusted.

14

My questions are simple. Just curious. It’s pretty easy to tell the odo. has been tampered with when looking at a 9 yo scooter with 3k on the odometer, which is just about all of them at used dealership. But how do you go about knowing that the odo was reseted on a car when the mileage is say… rewound by 50 or 100k?

The other question is I think this is illegal and punishable by law back home. How about here? Does the buyer have any resources to go after the seller in a case like this?

marboulette

15

You cant do a thing here :frowning:

They can sell you a car running on 2 cylinders immedietly after driving it out and your screwed.
In taiwan if it makes it out the forecourt, its yours and thats it.

16

Unfortunately smellybumlove is correct. There are almost no standards regarding the quality of used cars sold here which is why they can get away with practically anything they wish at used car garages.

I am hopefully going to find out though if tampered odo’s can be classed as false advertising based on the fact that many people will value vehicles based on a number of statistics, one of which arguably being the number of KM a vehicle has done. I will be working on this case and will update with more information. Again, in the meantime I’ll keep reminding people that the odometer shouldn’t be a factor when purchasing a used vehicle as most are tampered with, but even an original mileage will not dictate the quality, safety or service of a vehicle. It is the vehicle’s condition which counts. The only factors mileage may affect at some point are the resale value of the vehicle to a buyer that values figures over quality or service records as the service requirements based on mileage will be unclear.

17

I am the customer that Jamie referred to in this post, and I am still happy with his service. My original review of his services is posted here: viewtopic.php?f=75&t=79306

I have had the car for about 5 weeks now and have driven it maybe 5 times in that time. Two days ago I noticed that the car was suddenly overheating.

I took it to the Nissan service center in Keelung and this is how I found out that the mileage had been adjusted. Their records showed that the car had last been serviced at a Nissan service center in August 2008 with a mileage of 130999, compared to the 80000 it showed when I bought it. Their records also showed that the car had more than one owner.

The overheating problem was caused due to metal fatigue in the radiator, basically the area where the top hose was attached had just cracked off. So, the radiator had to be replaced.

Jamie has offered to pay for my repairs (NT$6000). However, I asked the Nissan mechanic if this is something that should have been obvious to Jamie when he did the inspection and he said that metal fatigue cannot be detected in a normal inspection. My husband then rang our Taipei mechanic (the ‘family’ mechanic) and asked him the same question, and he also confirmed this. I therefore declined Jamie’s offer of payment and refund.

I do have a big problem with the car dealer for lying about the mileage AND the number of owners, and I will file a complaint against him for false advertising. I am not sure if this will lead to anything, but hopefully the consumer protection bureau will have more info for me when I talk to them.

18

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add “checking with the original dealer for original records” to the check list.

marboulette

19

[quote=“marboulette”]Perhaps it would be a good idea to add “checking with the original dealer for original records” to the check list.

marboulette[/quote]

As much as I would like to confirm mileage to customers this method would not suffice 100% of the time and could lead to further misrepresentations of original mileage. I have paid thought to this method but I will describe how it could fail.

Dealer A holds full service history of vehicle until its last service at X mileage. At X mileage the owner or new owner no longer takes the vehicle to manufacturer’s dealer for service. Since X mileage the vehicle racks up an additional Y mileage. After additional Y mileage the vehicle’s clock is readjusted to X mileage or above and upon calling manufacturer’s service centre the vehicle is still above X mileage, but below truthful Y mileage, thus seeming legitimate to the inquirer.
This was one reason why A.C. has never tried to guarantee mileage, also coupled with the fact that mileage figures are not documented with the government or any government affiliated agency. Mileage figures alone therefore are no accurate guarantee of vehicle condition or history. Again it is regrettable that a simple call to the manufacturer’s service centre in this case would have confirmed that the vehicle’s odometer had been adjusted as the mileage after adjustment was in fact below the mileage shown on the manufacturer’s service centre logs. The failure in this case by my consideration was that I did not accurately inform the customer that mileage although seemingly accurate may in fact still be inaccurate. I do try as much as possible to use language when referring to information given by dealers or by displayed vehicle information in the sense that the information is offered to me, not by me, but I will make adjustments to information in the future so as to make more clear any responsibilities regarding information such as vehicle mileage, previous owners etc are not the responsibility of A.C. and such unofficial, undocumented information may not be considered accurate and for consideration only.

It is still the advice of A.C. that the government change its regulations regarding and display of the recording vehicle mileage, not because mileage is a simple means of judging a vehicle’s condition, but because accurate mileage can be a means to log and record a vehicle’s history and service history, thus more accurately offering legitimate value of a vehicle to any given customer or potential customer.

It is extremely regrettable that Taiwan’s government consistently fails to improve on vehicle standards and road safety related standards in Taiwan. It is my ongoing mission to improve Taiwan’s standards regarding not just the resale of motor vehicles in Taiwan, but also the overall safety related standards and economics found in Taiwan. Standards regarding resale and safety do not only benefit customers, owners and drivers in a financial sense but certainly improve safety overall as well as economy for the island and respect and trust in the used car industry.

If only Taiwanese would try harder in raising awareness in these senses and improving their own economy, they would reduce road vehicle related incidents, improve vehicle reliability, improve vehicle purchase value for money for the consumer, improve incentives to manage proper service and repair, improve income for service centres overall, improve income for parts providers, improve upon vehicle dependability and reliability, improve education of motor vehicle technicians and other related staff, maintain standards in vehicle related education and technical schools and the list goes on.
Incentives regarding vehicle safety and accurate information logging have successfully improved the situation for both user and provider as well as economy in many advanced countries all over the world and have been key in also reducing vehicle emissions.
Simply put, if Taiwan wants to consider itself a developing nation, then it must develop in this area of transport, and it doesn’t take much effort to make these changes.
Traffic related deaths are extremely high in Taiwan according to statistics, not much lower than death by natural cause and it is my opinion that a number of these deaths are no doubt linked to the poor or non existent standards in operation at this time.

It is one thing to hate the system for what it is, but it takes willingness to support change to make change and it won’t be made possible in silence.

Getting back to the original case posted here and to reuse an overused phrase already, it is regrettable that A.C. must learn and develop its services in this manner of trial and error as it is not my philosophy to operate in such a manner, however small scale a business in such a poor way, but regrettably this is what has happened. I do try to foresee as many potential problems as I can when dealing with the very, very poor operating standards of the majority of the used car sector in Taiwan, but I cannot always foresee all problems and events.
I try to keep A.C. as flexible as possible without drawing on all sorts of exclusions and disclaimers in order to fulfil the ever changing needs and demands of the customer and that is why much of the service has remained verbally based aside from the standard checking forms and basic agreement policy.
I still hope to remain flexible to a large degree and again offer the finding and checking service as best as can be performed according to the principles laid down by myself, which are to service the customer’s needs as much as possible as well as only recommend quality used vehicles.

A.C. will in future provide an advisory list of things to consider and look out for in regards to vehicle mileage, service history, ownership histories, facts and related figures and so forth to future customers.
I will be working on a condensed and easy to understand list/instructions for future customers to reference in order to familiarise themselves with the poor workings and SOP in Taiwan before making purchase commitments based on any potential inaccurate information.

In the meantime I remind any readers here that standards in Taiwan are extremely lacking and that there is no standard for motor vehicle maintenance in Taiwan. All used cars may be considered potential hazards, all vehicle related information may be presumed inaccurate until validated and that even after inspection by qualified personnel a vehicle may still fault.
It is the function of A.C. to limit as much as possible the chance of purchasing an unsuitable, dangerous, or unserviceable vehicle. A.C. will always try its utmost to prevent these types of vehicles from being recommended to its customers for purchase and to filter them out of consideration or assist in having them repaired to a satisfactory degree when operating under its vehicle sourcing service. Vehicles that are checked are checked according to a strict and comprehensive list of major vehicle systems and axillary components. Not all components of every vehicle variety may be checked, but those according to the 200 point A.C. checklist.

I continue to enjoy helping as much as I can the foreign community in finding and operating safe, working vehicles for their convenience and enjoyment in Taiwan.
I hope that the services offered by myself continue to be valued and supported as I believe they have been invaluable to a good number of people so far and have helped in many situations where there have been no other means for customers to otherwise find, repair or purchase a quality vehicle with ease.

Remember you can always give me a shout about any car related problems or requests in Taiwan, and I’ll try my best to help.

Jamie.

Thank you very much jands.

20

Same thing happened to me. I bought a car from a used car dealer. Took it to the Benz dealer for servicing, who informed me that about a year ago they had the same car there for service with about 40K more kilometers on the odometer.