Chinese VINs aren't the problem

[MJSfoto1956]

So I just purchased a Chinese JiaJue scooter from Powersportsmax.com and asked them to forward me the VIN prior to its arrival (it is currently in shipment across the country). On attempting to plug the VIN into Progressive Insurance's online website the VIN was not recognized. Hmmm... Next I attempted to see what NHTSA would say about the VIN. Using their online tool @ https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/decoder/Decoder. Using that tool I got a partial decode but throwing an error code 5: "VIN has errors in a few positions". I then searched for and dowloaded the official NHTSA manufacturer's code application @ ftp://ftp.nhtsa.dot.gov/MfrMail/ORG10475.pdf which explains the meaning of all the codes used by this particular manufacturer when creating their VINs. Studying this document I am able to ascertain that my bike's VIN has no errors at all -- everything is as it should be. This is in spite of the online database's claim of a "bad VIN". How could this be? So I wrote to NHTSA pointing out to them that their database is not up to date with the data being given to them by the Chinese manufacturers. We will see how they respond (if at all).

I think there are many possible explanations for the official NHTSA database being out-of-sync: Congress cutting their funding, laziness/incompetence, and quite possibly political pressure to keep these Chinese scooter manufacturers in limbo. I will let you know how it goes when I attempt to register here in Massachusetts, but I am planning on bringing all the above data with me to convince them that the federal NHTSA database that they are using to verify scooter VINs is in error. Will keep you posted on my progress.