A few people always ruin it for everyone..

Also there are 2 sensors just laying there in that picture, not going anywhere, another thing that can't be good.

they said it was taking buisness away from repair shops or something like that

so :-/

Pretty sure Vatozone carries cheap scanners for about $50 (I'm 99% sure that's where I got mine.)

It'll just throw you the code; you'll have to Google what the code is, but it'll take a lot of the guesswork out.

What? I thought they just weren't allowed to clear it anymore.

More like keeping people from getting scammed. $50 code reader...$20 to plug it in for 10 secs and parrot back the problem.....fair.

When you spend $1k+ on the code reader, yes.

Never seen anything but generic ones used at places like autozone though so why ban them?

If someone wants a high end scan they can drive their ass to the dealership, but when someone drives a 97 cavalier i doubt highly it's going to be of more use than a $50 generic scanner.

All a fancy OBDII reader does that a cheap one doesn't is give you a longer description of the fault. The rest of the features are useless as far as codes go. They do things like start up protocol tests and real time data viewing. Even cheap ones do that now. If you are going to spend $$$ in one get one that reads abs codes too. That comes in handy.

Thanks for irrelevant information.