Filed under: Maintenance
For the OCD in you: Ownersite lets you track vehicle history to a tee
Before I owned the '99 Alero, there was the '94 Protege. I had a habit of keeping the receipt for every drop of gas I put in that car. They were all stuffed in the glove box with the intent that I would plot a nice graph showing the Protege's gas mileage over time when it came to sell. Well, the Protege died a sudden death, so the car was never sold and the receipts went in the trash, but I've always liked the idea of tracking my vehicle's history for the benefit of the next owner and, ultimately, my own wallet. We found a site that lets you do just that called Ownersite. Its founder and CEO is Steven Eppinger who used to own and run F150Online.com before it was sold to Internet Brands back in April. Truck owners have been known to keep very detailed records of their beasts, which was a fact that led Eppinger to start Ownersite as his next venture. It does what you'd expect it to – allows for tracking your vehicle's mileage, maintenance, mpg, repairs, etc., but we've found it goes many levels deeper than other vehicle history tracking software and sites. For instance, it also monitors recalls and TSBs issued by the NHTSA and immediately alerts you if any affect the vehicle your driving.
[Source: Ownersite.com]
Since it's web-based, there's no program to download or files to back up, and you can access it anywhere, even on an iPhone of smart phone. The service, which is ad-free so a subscription starts at $14.95/year for one vehicle, allows you to scan in receipts for gas and repairs, upload pics, store vital information for warranties and insurance that you can access anywhere, and it can also remind you of service items based on your car's mileage or how much time has elapsed. Basically, you can record the history of your car like some auto-obsessed Herodotus.
Our favorite feature, however, is the ability to compile your vehicle's complete history and produce a virtual window sticker that can then be used to help sell your car on sites like AutoTrader or eBay Motors, potentially increasing its value by hundreds of dollars. That was my original intent in keeping all those gas receipts for the Protege, and it would've worked had the car not died, dammit.
You can sign up for a free 30-day trial if you're interested, which we've done as we'll attempt to channel our inner OCD and track the Alero for a month to see how it works. We'll report back when we've amassed enough to data to make some fancy graphs.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Anthony Gentavoe 8:21PM (8/14/2007)
SWEET! I've been talking about this site for years!!
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thecartracker 10:08PM (8/14/2007)
Interesting. A while ago I built a maintenance tracking site for myself and then opened it up for others to use after a couple of car buddies were interested.
It's not nearly as fancy as ownersite (no notifications or graphs), but I've found it useful for tracking my mileage, maintenance, and mods.
http://www.thecartracker.com/
I'll have to check out Ownersite. It looks pretty slick.
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Ben 10:17PM (8/14/2007)
I'm a fan of mymilemarker.com. It has a very slick design and for now is limited to tracking mileage. The creator is, however, always adding features and there are many big plans.
Check it out! http://mymilemarker.com
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M 12:26AM (8/15/2007)
I've just started using this too, i really get a kick out of entering data from my gas receipts, dunno why, it's just fun.
salguod 11:19PM (8/14/2007)
Personally, I like using Automobile software from linkesoft (www.linkesoft.com) on my Windows Mobile 5 phone. They've got a Palm version too.
It tracks total & monthly expenses, instant & average MPG, annual and monthly miles driven and more. I'll also graph the results and output to Excel.
The best part is having it with me whenever I ill up. I enter the odo reading & date while the tank is filling and the rest when I'm done. Works great and no receipts to save.
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Ben 12:35AM (8/15/2007)
mymilemarker.com lets you send in your fillup data via SMS using Twitter. Send the following tweet:
D mymm 41967 12.56 3.059
where 41967 is the odometer reading, 12.56 is # of gallons, and 3.059 is price per gallon.
Requires signing up for mymilemarker at http://mymilemarker.com and Twitter at http://www.twitter.com but it's definitely worth it - my biggest problem with doing this kind of tracking is A) remembering to save receipts and noting mileage on them and B) actually getting th data entered. Sending the data at the time of fillup is much easier.
salguod 10:06AM (8/15/2007)
I've only got basic phone service, no internet no text messages. I've got the phone PDA so I don't have to carry 2 devices. AutoMobile let's me do it all without extra services that I otherwise don't need.
Rus 12:11AM (8/15/2007)
I'll check more into it.
Thanks,
Rus
http://www.buyauthority.com
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felipe 9:24AM (8/15/2007)
you still bragging about the '99 Alero?
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Christopher Tomkins 5:01AM (11/21/2008)
I got a vehicle tracking system from fleetm8 and if has a feature like ownersite.
Not only do i track the history and fuel etc of my car, but if any one steals it fleetm8 will track them and help the polive recover it.
Luckly for the moment nothing has happened but it's nice to know i've got a system if anything did.
Also as my fuel usage is tracked, my fuel bills have dropped, saving me so far way more than the fleetm8 device.
have a look ----> www.fleetm8.com
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