Owner Notification Letter

What It Means

Once a manufacturer files a Part 573 report, federal law under 49 CFR 577 requires the company to notify every registered owner of the affected vehicle by first-class U.S. mail within 60 days. The letter must be written in plain language and must contain specific elements: a statement that NHTSA has determined a safety defect or noncompliance exists, a clear description of the defect and its safety consequence, an explanation of the warning signs drivers might notice, a description of the free remedy, an estimate of how long the repair will take, the earliest date the remedy will be available, the name and phone number of a dealer contact, NHTSA's toll-free Vehicle Safety Hotline (1-888-327-4236), and a statement that dealers cannot charge for the repair. The envelope itself must bear the words "Safety Recall Notice" to distinguish it from marketing mail. Manufacturers use state motor vehicle department registration data (purchased through aggregators like R.L. Polk/IHS Markit) to identify current owners, which is why vehicles that have changed hands frequently or been imported from other states sometimes miss the mailing, a primary cause of the roughly 25 percent of vehicles that remain unremedied 18 months after a recall. For high-urgency recalls, manufacturers often supplement with follow-up mailings at 3 months, 12 months, and 24 months, and some (especially for the Takata inflator and GM ignition switch) have used overnight courier, door-to-door canvassing, and multilingual notifications. RecallCheck displays the owner-notification issuance date for every campaign so owners can verify whether they should have received a letter and, if so, whether to request a duplicate from the manufacturer's recall hotline.

Frequently Asked Questions