Your car's history at a click - Auto Data service to be offered at Total service stations
Published:Sunday | March 11, 2012 | 12:00 AM
Mel Cooke, Sunday Gleaner Writer
About six or seven years ago, Randolph Cheeks Jr bought what he thought was his ideal car. "This was the first time I had a bit of money together and was in a position to buy a really decent ride," he said. "I lived very prudently for a while, putting together the money."
He scanned the Sunday Gleaner's Auto Classifieds and scoured the second-hand car lots, eventually coming up on a metallic blue, 2001, 3-Series BMW. A convertible, to boot.
"I fell in love with it," he said.
His parents contributed and, with the reassurance from the seller that he did not know of anything wrong with the vehicle, Cheeks was soon smiling down the highway - but the smile soon slipped.
Woes begin
Within four weeks of purchasing the 'Bimmer', all the lights on the instrument panel came on and the mechanism for the convertible top stopped working, among other things. A recommended garage did a patch job on the instrument panel, but Cheeks eventually ended up at the dealer with his car woes.
They got worse as Cheeks said the dealer told him, "I am not sure where you got it. It should not be in Jamaica." It turned out that the dream car had a nightmare history, with a major accident in the United States where it was sold as salvage and should not have been exported.
But it was - and then was in a major accident in Jamaica, so what Cheeks bought was a mishmash of parts.
The experience came back to Cheeks when he got involved in a project by major Jamaican motor vehicle loss adjusters/valuators, to collate their data into a database that would allow them to access previous valuations and accident data on vehicles.
When Cheeks, a solicitor for England and Wales and attorney-at-law in Jamaica, returned home from England in late 2010, he was brought on board as a legal advisor on the project. But his hands-on expertise in technology pulled him in deeper than he expected.
The group of loss adjusters had not got very far, despite a significant cash outlay.
"They did not have the technological expertise we brought to the problem," Cheeks said. 'We' includes his off-shore team of software developers in India. When he was approached to take over the project, Cheeks "saw the value proposition right away". That was connected with the jigsaw puzzle BMW experience, as Cheeks remembered his personal travails and reflected that things would have been different if he had had access to the information like that which Auto Data provides.
Already getting support
With data from MSC McKay and Mendez Livingston Inc on the system, and agreements in principle with other major motor vehicle loss adjustors/valuators, Auto Data is already being used by a number of major insurers, BCIC, NEM, JIIC and Advantage General's logos on the autodatajamaica.com website.
With the entry of a vehicle's VIN, a vehicle's local history, including valuations and accidents, is accessed with a click. Also, users are able to get an accurate estimate of a vehicle's value by inputting the required data to get an E-Value.
Further, there is a facility to access the US system, instaVIN, which covers American imports. Cheeks points out that this includes motorcycles, notorious for being brought into the island in pieces and then reassembled. Having the insurers involved in the project helped immensely in refining the data in the way most useful to them.
Currently autodatajamaica.com is accessible only by the companies involved, but Cheeks plans to make it available to the public soon - for a fee - in two to three months, confident that the service will be significantly cheaper than using a traditional valuation. And even before that, Total Managing Director Gordon Craig says Auto Data will be piloted in the Corporate Area by the end of March, where people can walk into a service station and access the system. Once the pilot is successful, Craig said, Total will go islandwide with Auto Data, again at a "very, very reasonable" cost.
Cheeks points out the advantages all-around to the potential purchaser, the insurer, the loss adjuster and even the institution being asked to finance a purchase, with the data readily at hand to make informed decisions. He points out the safety aspect as well, noting that a picture of his six-month-old son, Xander, is on the website. As cars that have been in major accidents and then reconditioned are prone to structural weaknesses, Cheeks said someone has the right to know if the vehicle they are putting their child in has suffered major damage.
Automotives asks Cheeks about vehicles being imported from Japan and he said, "that would be the Holy Grail". Noting that some of the vehicles have questionable backgrounds, Cheeks said that Japan does not have a central system that can be accessed readily, but he is currently in discussions with ministry officials and major dealers to see how Auto Data can be set up for that market.
And the mishmash, metallic blue BMW convertible of automobile nightmares? After doing by repeat visits what Auto Data does with a click, Cheeks turned the other cheek, accepted his losses and sold the car - but doing so in a manner worthy of Auto Data that was at that point in his yet to be determined future.
"We disclosed it as it was to the purchaser. I suffered a tremendous loss," Cheeks said.