Troubleshooting¶
The element shows nothing on the front end¶
Almost always a missing VIN Category. Without it the element deliberately renders nothing rather than producing a broken link.
Logged-in administrators see a message in its place — You don't have a VIN category set, choose one here — linking straight to the AutoCheck tab. Visitors see empty space, so check the page while logged in if you're unsure.
Other causes:
- No listing in context. The element renders only where a single listing exists — a VDP or a search result row. On a general page it produces nothing.
- The extension is inactive. Confirm it in DMS → Extensions, and that your license is Starter or higher.
The report page shows "Error response code: 401" or similar¶
AutoCheck rejected the request. The number is the HTTP status they returned.
| Code | Usual cause |
|---|---|
| 401 / 403 | Credentials wrong or the account lacks DealerWebLink access |
| 400 | Malformed request — most often a VIN that isn't a valid 17-character VIN |
| 500 / 503 | An outage on AutoCheck's side. Retry later. |
Work through:
- Re-check Customer ID, Secondary ID, and Password for stray spaces from copy-paste. Both IDs are 8 characters.
- Confirm whether your account needs a Secondary ID. Some do, some don't — supplying the wrong one fails the same way as omitting a required one.
- Confirm your account is active with AutoCheck and includes DealerWebLink. A dealer login that works on autocheck.com doesn't guarantee API access.
Failed requests aren't cached, so fixing the credentials takes effect on the next click with no cache to clear.
The report is for the wrong vehicle¶
The VIN sent to AutoCheck is read from the category chosen in VIN Category. If that setting points at the wrong category — stock number, trim, model code — every report will be wrong or fail.
Check the listing itself, too: a mistyped VIN on the listing produces a mismatched or empty report. AutoCheck matches on VIN alone and has no way to know the vehicle you meant.
The report is out of date¶
Reports are cached per VIN for 24 hours. A report pulled this morning is served from cache for the rest of the day, even if AutoCheck's data changed in the meantime.
This is normally what you want — it keeps a busy listing from consuming an AutoCheck request per pageview. If you need a fresh pull immediately, clear the site's transients; the cache key is autocheck_vin_report_{VIN}.
Nothing happens when a visitor clicks¶
The link opens the listing's own URL with an extra parameter. If clicking does nothing, or lands on the normal listing page instead of a report:
- Check for a caching plugin stripping query parameters or serving the cached listing page. Exclude URLs carrying
autocheck_vin_reportfrom full-page caching. - Check for a security plugin or firewall blocking outbound requests from your server to
autocheck.com. The report is fetched server-side, so an outbound block produces an empty page rather than an error.
Reports work on one listing type but not another¶
Settings are stored per listing type, credentials included. Configuring the AutoCheck tab on Cars does nothing for Trucks — open that type's own settings and fill it in there as well.