Do you inspect used vehicles for customers before they decide to purchase them? Some businesses call these "used car safety inspections" and others call them "comprehensive inspections." The cost of these inspections usually depends on how thoroughly the customer wants the vehicle inspected. At my shop, we perform a number of pre-purchase inspections every month for customers trying to gauge the condition of used vehicles - we have encouraged customers and our radio audience to have used cars inspected before purchasing them to help avoid problems. These inspections allow a professional to look over the vehicle and offer an opinion on its overall condition, giving the buyer an idea of the vehicle's worthiness.

Most used vehicles today are sold "as is." By performing pre-purchase inspections, we are often able to find things that need attention or have been neglected, and knowing the cost of needed repairs can help a buyer determine a used car's dollar value. However, there is no way that we as automotive technicians can tell exactly how long something will last or if something will break tomorrow.

I know of an auto repair shop that is currently in a predicament because of such an inspection. It is a very good shop with a positive reputation, and I'm confident that the technicians did their best to inspect the vehicle. Nevertheless, sometime after the customer purchased the used vehicle, a mechanical part did fail without warning.

The customer probably purchased the vehicle "as is" since it was used. It is likely that the customer bought the vehicle not considering the possibility that something could go wrong with the car unexpectedly. When something did happen to the car, the customer needed someone to blame. Since the place of purchase sold the vehicle "as is," the customer had to find another party to blame for his problem. The shop who inspected the vehicle and offered an opinion became the bad guy. It seems that many people today want to blame others for their problems and will run to an attorney at the slightest provocation. I'm not sure how this case will come out, but it will at the very least cost the shop attorney fees to defend itself.

Now can this happen to me or you? I have had to really give some thought as to what we can do to prevent any liability when we do inspections. Our customers need to realize that we can give only an opinion on the condition of the vehicles when we do inspections. It is impossible to know the vehicle's total condition when we only see it once, and even then for only about one hour.

As professionals, we do our best to serve the motoring public, but we are only human after all and sometimes fail to see everything. Perhaps we need to put a disclaimer on our repair orders to try to protect ourselves from possible litigation. This is just some food for thought.

On the up side, we know that for every bad customer, there are hundreds of the finest customers in the world that walk through our doors every day. For those good customers, I am very thankful.

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