Thought I would tell you about a CARFAX incident.
I was looking for a Corvette to play with and decided on a 2004 Z06 with 5000 miles on it.
Got the CARFAX and it looked good. No accidents but it had been a lease vehicle. I looked it over, asked the salesman questions he answered. Bought the vehicle and all was good. I had purchased a nice vette at a fair price.
I get the bug for a C6 Z06 and start looking. I found one to trade on.
The salesman called and informed me that my car had been in an accident. I said it must be some mistake. I have the original CARFAX and it shows nothing.
The new CARFAX goes like this.
July 08 minor accident . Police report minor damage. No air bag deployment and car driven away. CARFAX begins reporting this July of 2010.
So, my car was involved in an accident July of 2008 with a police report.I buy a CARFAX Feb of 2009. It does not mention it and I buy a "clean " undamaged vette at a fair but undamaged premium price.
I try to sell or trade in 2011 and I am told buy the dealer my vehicle has been in an accident in 7/2008, I purchase a clean CARFAX 2/2009 and CARFAX starts reporting the accident in 2010 and never lets me know.
I send both copies of the CARFAX's to a rep of CARFAX and wait. The deal falls through but the salesman tells me the details of my car's accident. No word from CARFAX rep. Repeated emails and phone calls and still nothing from CARFAX.
I feel I have been had. I see it as someone did not do their job or someone commited fraud.
Anyone had an issue like this? What was the outcome?

 

Time to dust off the old lawyer and to sell your car to Carfax!

 

Sometimes it takes some time for the report to make it to CarFax. My GTI was rear ended over 2 months ago (not bad)... Its still not on Carfax.

Toque

 

Carfax is largely worthless for exactly that kind of non-information

 

Its amazing how such a crappy service got such a huge following of uninformed people that actually believe its the gold standard of vehicle history. At the bottom of the Carfax website:

CARFAX Vehicle History Reports are based on information supplied to CARFAX. CARFAX does not have the complete history of every vehicle.

 

I never trusted Carfax completly.

 

carfax is as worthless as the carfox on the commercial

 

Carfax bites, I ran it on a car I owned and wrecked and it came back clean.

 

My honda was in an accident in 08 which was repaired through my insurance company. The carfax on that vehicle still comes up clean....

 

Carfax sucks period.

 

Carfax will buy your car from you.....the question is for how much

 

Like any other computer data system CARFAX only has available the information that has been inputted. If you depend on a computer for your information to be totally accurate you will be fooled; and not through any problem with or fault of the computer.

It is not a perfect world. You can say CARFAX sucks if you want to but it doesn't make you right. It sure is better than having no information available to you and the cost is not outrageous.

 

Thank You for posting this as I was one of the dummies that thought it could be relied upon

 

I prefer AutoCheck over Carfax. Autocheck has more information provided to them from auctions and such.

I have owned/seen/ and come across vehicle's that have had salvage titles, major accidents, etc that were CLEAN on Carfax, but on Autocheck it poped right up as being marked.

I also like how Carfax advertises that it is free at dealers. It is not free, the consumer just doesnt have to pay for it, the dealer does, adding yet another expense per month. Where does that expense go? Trickles down to the person buying the car. Dumb and useless Carfax is.

 

It seems to be "the thing to do" to go sell your car to a dealership fresh from the body shop after an accident so that the dealer doesn't pull CARFAX and have the incident appear.

I was looking at a Cadi a while back that was sitting on a dealer lot for 9 months. They showed me the original CARFAX from when they acquired the vehicle, no incidents. I asked them to please pull a current one, just so I could be assured there were no new incidents since it had been so long. He pulled it and was surprised to see that it had a major accident and sure enough, when I inspected the body work around the trunk, you could see the repairs.

The other thing to know is that if there is no police report and it doesn't go through the insurance system, you're not likely to see an incident on CARFAX.

CARFAX is a tool, it's not perfect. When buying used, you should always go over the car top to bottom to look for evidence of body work, rust, leaks, mechanical issues, etc.

 

Well put. I would never rely totally on Carfax to purchase a car - always check it out for yourself or have a competent mechanic/body shop do a check for you.

 

Carfax is a bad joke......Experian is a good report!

 

Its called marketing.....and I agree with you. They advertise like crazy down here...TV, radio etc.

 

It amazes me how we have become accustom to not having any responsibility. It is always someone else at fault.
No info or lies one in the same.
I'm trying to find out if CF did not do their job, or the owner snookered the dealer , or the dealer snookered me.
I would love the see the accident report that some one at CF has seen.
I would like to see who did the repair and what it cost. I guess thats what lawyers are for.