simply useful
For the most part, simply to scratch our own itch. In the process of working on an auto insurance application for agents, Mr. Quotey, we discovered that there were very few web services one could use to decode a VIN, and even fewer that worked the way we wanted them too and zero that would let you decode a VIN for less than 33 cents. We are talking basic data for 33 cents a VIN, that just sounded expensive when we compared it to other data sets that we've gotten and done far more with, such as MaxMind's geolocation database. So take a look at our packages, we offer our services for as low as 21 cents per VIN.
Contact us at support -at- mrquotey -dot- com. And, we look forward to everyone's feedback and comments, we work very hard to address everything you throw our way. We are all about happy customers :)
A VIN decoding is any request made to our web service. There are three types of requests:
Basically, of the types of requests above, which ones are counted against remaining decodings? At this point, we are counting any valid request that returns data and any request that does not pass the checksum test. This helps prevent abuse and helps us manage a very responsive server. We are not counting valid VINs against you when we do not have data for the VIN. Having said that, it is important to note details about our dataset. So, we do not mind that you send us invalid requests (those that do not pass checksums) but try to do your best to validate VINs before sending the request, at a minimum, make sure it is 17 characters long, and you will save yourself some money :)
I know it is not really a question, but we think it deserves answering :) The dataset we use is quite comprehensive, but we've found the best results primarily for those VINs from North and South America. It is also worth noting that the basic dataset is much further reaching than the complete dataset. Also worth mentioning that our VIN dataset contains year make model (at the very least) data from 1987 to the present.
Sure, we've set it up so that in place of where you would normally pass in the VIN to your code, you would pass in "account_information". So for example, in ruby, this would be the example:
ruby > VinApi.get("account_information") => {"in_good_standing" => true, "vins_remaining" => 275, "account_holder_since" => Tue, 25 Jan 2011, "vins_purchased" => 300, "total_spent" => 99.0, "vins_used" => 25}
So far we have code examples for Ruby, PHP, VB .NET and cURL. But, truly, any language that a) has its own web service libraries, b) HTTP libraries or even c) a way to make a system call to something like cURL, should do the trick. BTW - if you do get your code working with a language we don't have examples for or even if you made improvements to our examples, please contact us and let us know - support -at- mrquotey -dot- com.
For more information, we recommend the Examples Page or pullmonkey.com's VIN API posts. And if those don't help, please do not hesitate to contact us.