Ugh, Car: Deal Check

At the dealership? Scan the quote before you sign. Ugh, Car flags junk fees, add-ons and payment tricks, then gives you the sentence to say. Photograph the purchase, finance or lease agreement. Seventeen checks run against shipped data, no network needed — the finance office is where signal is worst: • Doc fee against your state's statutory cap, with the statute cited • Destination against the manufacturer's published figure • Add-ons against real price ranges — including the ones with no documented value at any price, like VIN etching and nitrogen fill • The same charge billed twice • Title, registration, tire and inspection fees against published state schedules • Sales tax recomputed, including how your state treats a trade-in • Your monthly payment recomputed from the APR, term and amount financed • Negative equity rolled in from the last loan • APR against what your credit tier actually averaged • Lease money factor, residual, acquisition and disposition fees — plus the capitalized-cost itemization federal law entitles you to • The dealer's licence against your state's register • The VIN against the car the paperwork describes • A gas-guzzler tax against EPA's own liability flag Every flag carries the dollar amount, the benchmark it was measured against, the source, and the exact question to ask. You get an out-the-door target and a talk track that feeds you one question at a time, in order, at the desk. Photograph the window sticker too and it checks MSRP, destination and factory options against the factory's numbers for your exact car. NEW: NHTSA crash-test ratings, and your lender's CFPB complaint record read straight off the assignment line. BEFORE YOU GO Model-first market search builds your filters and opens Cars.com, Autotrader, TrueCar or CarGurus. It does not scrape listings or resell inventory. Capture the cars you're considering, decode any VIN through NHTSA, then line up dealer quotes side by side. FIVE TOOLS, KEPT SEPARATE Because letting one number hide another is how a deal goes wrong. • Buying plan — budget, true cost of the loan, and a 50-point journey • Trade Desk — keeps payoff, equity, estimates and real written offers apart • Lease Lab — money factor, residual, drive-off, effective monthly cost • Energy cost — petrol against home charging against public charging • Insurance planner — comparable coverage and real quotes, side by side THEN IT KEEPS THE CAR Buying is one afternoon. Owning is years. The Garage works out what your car needs and when, by powertrain — a Subaru wants a shorter oil interval than a Toyota, and an electric car doesn't want one at all. Log what you've had done and reminders arrive before something becomes expensive rather than after. SAFETY IS NEVER BEHIND THE PAYWALL Recall checks against NHTSA, including do-not-drive and fire-risk campaigns, alerted whether or not the app is open. Crash-test ratings. Your lender's record. Recall repairs are free by law, and putting a safety warning behind a subscription would make this the same kind of app it exists to protect you from. HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT KNOWS Maintenance intervals are typical figures for your make, not your car's official schedule — your manual wins, and you can replace any interval with the real one. Recalls and crash ratings cover a year, make and model, not your specific car. Transaction prices are Washington State electric vehicles only — the only state that publishes what cars actually sold for. When a lookup fails it says so, rather than showing an all-clear. FREE One car, one deal, one of each scenario — with every finding, recall alerts and maintenance reminders. Pro lifts the limits and adds widgets, full service history, total spend and side-by-side comparisons. No account. No ads. No analytics. No tracking. No third-party SDKs. The scan is read entirely on your iPhone. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/