With all of the attention to recalls, you might think that car buyers are standing en masse outside dealer service departments pounding on the doors, demanding that whatever is wrong is taken care of tout suite.

Apparently that’s not the case.

According to an estimate from Carfax, that service that allows used car customers to find out whether the car they’re interested in has a checked past, “Estimates are that more than one out of every four recalled vehicles goes unfixed.”

Given that some 10-million vehicles were recalled in 2008, for example, that one out of four is a big number.

So in the event that you’ve got your eye on a car and wonder whether everything beyond the 3,000-mile oil changes have been performed, you might want to use a free service that Carfax offers to input the vehicle’s VIN to see if there’s an open recall for the vehicle. You can get to it here.