Carfax - explain please

[dullpain]

Just curious about this Carfax report stuff. How does it work?? If I wreck my vehicle, put it in the shop for repair, is the shop required to report??

Are there Carfax Police?? Carfax Investigators?? Who started this Carfax crap, and who enforces???

AM I in TROUBLE??

 

[Jagmandave]

Your insurance company is the one that will turn in a report to Carfax, but only if the car is totaled. (Some states have more stringent laws on this than others) If you take your car to the body shop and pay for repairs, no one but you and the shop need know about it. If you sell it repaired after a non-compensated total without disclosing the wreck, well it's on your conscience then.........

Carfax is supposed to be a method of keeping car dealers more honest, by requiring any major problems such as a total, or factory buyback or lemon law proceedings to be disclosed to the buyer. As a dealer, we also used it to keep our customers honest as well, to keep them from trading in to us a flood damaged or accident total as a "normal" car................

It also creates a speedometer reading database, each time the title changes hands the current speedometer reading is recorded in the database, so any anomalies show up right away.

 

[MadReferee]

Some states even report inspection failures and the reason, any insurance claims for damage and change of ownership along with the mileage at each.

 

[Bird]

A couple of years ago, while shopping for an older, cheaper pickup truck for my grandson, I stopped to look at a couple of high mileage old Chevy S-10 pickups on a used car lot. Now they each had over 100k on their odometers, but Carfax showed even higher (considerably higher) numbers a year or two earlier.

 

[CRJCaptain]

Just curious about this Carfax report stuff. How does it work?? If I wreck my vehicle, put it in the shop for repair, is the shop required to report??

Are there Carfax Police?? Carfax Investigators?? Who started this Carfax crap, and who enforces???

AM I in TROUBLE??

I don't have a problem with it...if I'm going to buy a used car I think one has the right to know the history of the vehicle, especially considering the honesty of many sellers out there today. Caveat emptor...buyer beware.

 

[Gary_in_Indiana]

Your insurance company is the one that will turn in a report to Carfax, but only if the car is totaled. (Some states have more stringent laws on this than others) If you take your car to the body shop and pay for repairs, no one but you and the shop need know about it. If you sell it repaired after a non-compensated total without disclosing the wreck, well it's on your conscience then.........

Carfax is supposed to be a method of keeping car dealers more honest, by requiring any major problems such as a total, or factory buyback or lemon law proceedings to be disclosed to the buyer. As a dealer, we also used it to keep our customers honest as well, to keep them from trading in to us a flood damaged or accident total as a "normal" car................

It also creates a speedometer reading database, each time the title changes hands the current speedometer reading is recorded in the database, so any anomalies show up right away.

Another source of odometer information is information from dealer auto auctions, whether the car sells or not. Still, Carfax is far from infallible and can be incredibly misleading (as can title brands like 'salvage' and others).

Let me cite a couple examples from personal experience with thirty years in the industry. If a car is stolen and recovered after the insurance company has paid off the owner, title to the vehicle passes to the insurance company. Even if the car is recovered in impeccable condition with no damage whatsoever, the fact that it goes to the insurance company automatically causes the title to be branded "salvage." Hardly a fair or accurate representation.

On the flip side, if a car is wrecked and deemed a total loss for insurance purposes but the insured elects to "keep the salvage" and take a settlement sum from the insurance company of the value of the car less the value of the salvage, then the title never transfers to the insurance company and, therefore never gets branded "salvage." The owner can then have the car repaired and there is no record in Carfax.

So there you have it. Two examples on opposite ends of the spectrum where Carfax can be totally misleading. It's a great marketing tool, but, as always, the best thing you can do is to exercise your own due diligence in your purchase selection and not rely on a piece of paper you bought for forty bucks over the Internet.

 

[Dusty]

Not all information is reported. Only the information that is considered public information. If the insurance company pays you to fix your vehicle, that is considered private and the insurance company can't disclose that information. If you have the vehicle inspected at a state inspection agency, that is public information, and they will have that on record. I have found that they sometimes do miss a lot of public information.
Dusty