Does a recall repair cost anything?
No. Under 49 U.S.C. § 30120 the manufacturer must remedy a safety defect at no charge — parts, labor and diagnosis included — and it makes no difference whether you are the original owner or bought the vehicle second-hand.
There is a limit, which is often left out. The obligation applies where the vehicle was first sold less than 15 years before the recall was announced, or 5 years for tires. Beyond that a manufacturer may still carry out the work free of charge, and many do, but they are no longer required to.
Can a dealer refuse, or charge me?
A franchised dealer for the brand cannot charge you for recall work, and cannot require that you bought the vehicle from them. They can ask you to wait for parts.
If a dealer refuses the repair or tries to bill you for it, report it to NHTSA on 1-888-327-4236 or at nhtsa.gov.
Does a recall expire if I ignore it?
The repair itself does not expire the way a warranty does, and there is no deadline by which you must book it. What can lapse is the manufacturer's legal obligation to do it for free, on the 15-year clock above.
An unrepaired safety recall does not stop a vehicle being sold privately, and it does not usually affect state inspection, but it is a defect the manufacturer has formally admitted to.
Why does this site not tell me if my own car is affected?
Because no public service can. NHTSA's per-VIN recall endpoint is not open to third parties, so the only route available to us is to decode a VIN into its make, model and year and show every recall issued for that vehicle line.
Whether a particular recall applies to your car depends on where and when it was built, and whether the repair has already been done exists only in the manufacturer's records. NHTSA queries those directly — that is the check to use for a definitive answer.
What does "potentially affected" actually mean?
It is the manufacturer's estimate of how many vehicles could carry the defect, usually a whole production batch. It is not a count of vehicles that failed, and not a count of confirmed faults.
A recall covering two million vehicles is not necessarily more dangerous than one covering two hundred. The consequence described on the recall page matters far more than the size of the batch.
I bought the car used and never got a letter. What now?
Manufacturers write to registered owners, so a letter sent before you bought the vehicle will have gone to someone else, and a change of address can break the chain entirely.
Your entitlement to the repair does not depend on having received the letter. Contact any franchised dealer for the brand with your VIN.
How current is the data here?
NHTSA rebuilds its recall files every morning and this site ingests them daily, so a recall usually appears here within a day of being filed.
Repair-completion figures are slower by nature: manufacturers report them quarterly, so those numbers can be up to three months behind.
Is a technical service bulletin the same as a recall?
No. A TSB is a repair instruction a manufacturer issues to its dealers, often for a known but non-safety fault. It is not safety-mandated, owners are not notified, and the work is not automatically free.
Only a Part 573 safety recall carries the free-repair entitlement.
Who runs this site, and is it official?
It is independent and not affiliated with NHTSA, the US Department of Transportation, or any vehicle manufacturer.
The recall data is NHTSA's published open data, reproduced here with the wording of each defect, consequence and remedy as the manufacturer filed it. For anything official, and for a per-VIN answer, go to nhtsa.gov/recalls.
Nothing here is legal advice. For a definitive answer on a specific vehicle, or to report a dealer who refuses recall work, contact NHTSA at nhtsa.gov/recalls or on 1-888-327-4236.