Maintenance records online... if dealer maintained?

[quickster]

I had a thought that if a car was dealer maintained, would you be able to access recall or maintenance records? Or does Carfax keep track of recall fixes? I noticed on the pillar that the airbag was replaced in 2005, but the car was never hit. Anybody know if you can check records thru MB?

[pawoSD]

No. That'd be like the largest violation of privacy possible LOL. Just get a person's VIN off their car in a parking lot, go online and look up if they've been maintaining it? I don't think so.

[Jim B.]

Originally Posted by quickster

I had a thought that if a car was dealer maintained, would you be able to access recall or maintenance records? Or does Carfax keep track of recall fixes? I noticed on the pillar that the airbag was replaced in 2005, but the car was never hit. Anybody know if you can check records thru MB?

The new Subaru Outback I bought a few weeks ago has an excellent online maintenance tracking program. I created my account last night. You can create on for any Subaru from about 1996 to date.

If the car is dealer serviced, the dealer submits the service information to your account. If you take it to an Indy, you put it in, yourself.

Very nice if you want to sell later, it gives you an instant service history printout = higher resale value.

www.mysubaru.com

The Vehicle Master Inquiry (for Mercedes) only tracks warrranty dealer related repairs, so far as I know.

CARFAX prints recall notices, but I don't know how reliable that is.

What about ALLDATA?

For regular Mercedes Benz service history, it varies dealer to dealer, but for the most part, they won't release any records that don't have YOUR name on the Repair order. (Protecting Privacy of Previous owners through paranoia)

[quickster]

I know, another stupid question. Won't have them on the older models, which 99% of the folks here have. I didn't think this one thru before posting. Wouldn't that be great though?