How this site makes money

Why this page exists

You should know how a site pays its bills. That shapes what it shows you and why. Here's the plain version for RecallGarage.

The recall and complaint data is free

Everything you read here about recalls and complaints comes from NHTSA, the federal agency that tracks vehicle safety. That data is public. We didn't pay for it and you don't pay for it.

If you want to check whether your specific car is under an open recall, the official tool is nhtsa.gov/recalls. It's free, it's the source of record, and we link to it first on every recall page before anything else. Recall repairs tied to an open recall are free at franchised dealers. No site, including ours, can override that or charge you for it.

How we plan to make money

We're building this site to eventually earn money two ways:

• Affiliate partnerships with VIN history report providers. These are the paid reports that show a car's title history, accident records, and ownership history, separate from NHTSA's free recall lookup. If you click through and buy a report from a partner, we may earn a referral fee at no extra cost to you.
• Display ads. Standard ad placements from ad networks, the kind you see on most content sites.

What's live today and what isn't

As of now, no affiliate partner is signed. The spots where a VIN report link or ad might eventually appear are empty placeholders. We're not routing you to any paid product yet, because there isn't one in place.

When that changes, this page will change with it. We'll name the partners, explain what the affiliate relationship means for you, and keep the free NHTSA link in the same spot it's always been: first.

What this means for how we write

A few ground rules we hold ourselves to, regardless of who eventually advertises here:

• We never tell you your specific car has a recall based on model year alone. Recalls apply to VIN ranges, not entire model years. Always check your own VIN.
• Any future VIN history affiliate link will be clearly separate from the free NHTSA recall data. We won't blend a paid product into what's actually a free government lookup.
• Ad placement, if and when it exists, won't change the recall or complaint numbers we report. Those come straight from NHTSA data and stay that way.

Questions

If something on this site looks like it's steering you toward a paid product without saying so, that's a mistake and we want to fix it. This page is the standing answer to "how does this site make money," and we'll keep it current as our monetization actually launches, not before.