The benefit of doing a VIN check in Nigeria before
you purchase a car can never be overestimated. It
will help save your hard earned money and most
importantly your time amongst others. I have
always known that some of us would do anything to
sell our cars. However, the extent of this malicious
act has grown from unreasonable to unfathomable.
you purchase a car can never be overestimated. It
will help save your hard earned money and most
importantly your time amongst others. I have
always known that some of us would do anything to
sell our cars. However, the extent of this malicious
act has grown from unreasonable to unfathomable.
You won’t believe what my eyes have seen as I am
currently trying to get a 2007-2010 Camry for a
client. The issues vary from flooded cars, rolled
back mileage and extreme accidents to jalopy cars
that look picture-perfect online. The car that drove
me to the brink was a 2009 tokunbo Camry on OLX
for N2m which looked good enough coupled with
the usual hype from the seller.
Nevertheless, something seemed amiss because
the price was too good. As usual, I requested for
the car’s VIN to determine its history before going
for a physical inspection. The disastrous history
report revealed it was sold as scrap/destroyed car
in USA and shipped to Nigeria 4 years ago, but the
seller misrepresented this car to be a clean
tokunbo, despite the fact that it has been registered
and used in Nigeria for 3 years.
These same reasons compelled me to start
importing all my client’s cars from the USA and
Canada in 2011, it has been cheaper and less
stressful as the entire process from purchase to
delivery is usually done from the comfort of my
home. Fast forward to 2016, looking inward has
become inevitable due to the sky-high dollar
exchange rate. Therefore, clients with constrained
budget have to settle for tokunbo cars while some
prefer the Nigerian used cars.
Finally, when a deal seems too good to be true,
then you need to be more careful e.g when the
price is too fanimorous, the low mileage is not
commensurate to the age of the car (e.g a 2001
model regular car will hardly have a mileage of
75,000 miles), when the seller wants you to take
the car after paying 60% deposit while the balance
will be spread over 3-6 months (in this case, the
car is probably a Nigeria used car presented as
tokunbo and it’s not worth more than your initial
deposit so the balance you’ll be paying is extra
profit to the seller) etc
