Someone Has to Look at the Car

A VIN verification is exactly what it sounds like: an authorized person physically inspects the vehicle and confirms that the Vehicle Identification Number on it matches the number on the paperwork. It takes a few minutes. It exists because paperwork can describe a car that is not the car in front of you.

Who needs one

The common trigger is a vehicle that was previously registered outside California — brought in from another state or imported from another country. California has never seen that car, so before it enters the state's records, someone confirms it exists as described.

Verifications also come up for vehicles with a title problem or discrepancy, for some specially constructed or revived-salvage vehicles, and where the paperwork and the car disagree in some way that has to be resolved. If you are registering an ordinary California car bought from a California owner, you almost certainly do not need one.

Who can do it

DMV employees at a field office do them. So do licensed vehicle verifiers and, for many situations, law enforcement. Some DMV offices handle verifications only at certain hours or in a particular lane, so check the office's own information before driving over — this is a transaction where turning up at the wrong time genuinely means coming back.

Bring the car itself. This seems obvious and is regularly forgotten by people who came to do the paperwork and left the vehicle at home.

What the verifier looks at

The VIN plate where the dashboard meets the windshield, the federal safety certification label in the driver's door jamb, and often the engine or a secondary location. They confirm the numbers agree with each other and with your documents, and they note the odometer and the general description of the vehicle.

Where a VIN plate is missing, damaged or unreadable, the process gets longer and may route to a specialist referee. That is worth discovering before you buy a car, not after.

What a VIN actually encodes

Seventeen characters, and they are not random. The opening group identifies where the vehicle was built and by whom, the middle describes the vehicle itself — body style, engine, restraint system — and the later characters carry a check digit, the model year and the plant, ending in a serial number unique to that car.

Two consequences follow. First, the letters I, O and Q never appear in a VIN, because they are too easily confused with 1 and 0 — so if you are reading one off a dusty plate, those characters are digits. Second, the VIN describes the exact build, which is why it produces a more accurate insurance quote than any description of the car ever will.

How to avoid a second trip

• Bring the vehicle, the title, and any out-of-state registration you hold.
• Clean the windshield in front of the VIN plate and make sure the door jamb label is not covered by a sticker.
• Confirm the VIN on your paperwork matches the car before you go, character by character. A 5 read as an S is the classic.
• Check the office's hours for verifications specifically.

Where the VIN meets your insurance

The VIN is also what your insurer uses to identify the exact vehicle — not just make and model but trim, engine and safety equipment, all of which affect what the car costs to repair and therefore what it costs to insure. A quote built from "a 2016 sedan" is an estimate; a quote built from the VIN is the price.

So when you have the VIN confirmed, that is the moment to get an accurate number rather than a rough one. Send us the VIN and the quote we give you is the quote that issues.