CARFAX

[Polie]

Just and FYI I have free CARFAX's now if anyone would like a vin run.

[vt_maverick]

Thanks for the offer Polie, but just be forewarned (and I think Dub posted it in the other thread already) that CarFax is garbage. My wife and I bought a two-door Honda Accord two years ago that had a clean report. When we went to trade it in at a Car Max, they informed us that it had been sold in an auction in Georgia where it was labeled as having "major unibody damage". In other words, frame damage. We had to unload the car because at the time we had no four-door vehicle and a baby on the way. We checked at several dealerships and none would give us more than $6500 for a car that she still owed almost $13K on. We're still trying to pay down that credit card bill.

CarFax doesn't get insurance data, only DMV data, and even that only comes from about 30-something states. That means that if your car has ever been in any of the other states, or if the police didn't respond to the site of the accident, CarFax will likely never know about it. Got a problem with it? Try calling them - there's no telephone number or email address on their site for complaints. Try filing a BBB complaint - apparently they have thousands upon thousands of complaints filed already, and not all are for missing data. In some cases they've tagged vehicles as having major accidents that were never in one, but because everybody trusts these reports as gospel, those cars become almost totally unsellable.

The good information is a dealer-proprietary system called AutoCheck that CarMax and most other dealerships use. The CarMax folks felt so bad for us so they let us call them with VINs on other used cars to help us out. Definitely recommend getting one of those run as opposed to Car Fax.

[Gussie2000]

Thanks for the offer Polie, but just be forewarned (and I think Dub posted it in the other thread already) that CarFax is garbage. My wife and I bought a two-door Honda Accord two years ago that had a clean report. When we went to trade it in at a Car Max, they informed us that it had been sold in an auction in Georgia where it was labeled as having "major unibody damage". In other words, frame damage. We had to unload the car because at the time we had no four-door vehicle and a baby on the way. We checked at several dealerships and none would give us more than $6500 for a car that she still owed almost $13K on. We're still trying to pay down that credit card bill.

CarFax doesn't get insurance data, only DMV data, and even that only comes from about 30-something states. That means that if your car has ever been in any of the other states, or if the police didn't respond to the site of the accident, CarFax will likely never know about it. Got a problem with it? Try calling them - there's no telephone number or email address on their site for complaints. Try filing a BBB complaint - apparently they have thousands upon thousands of complaints filed already, and not all are for missing data. In some cases they've tagged vehicles as having major accidents that were never in one, but because everybody trusts these reports as gospel, those cars become almost totally unsellable.

The good information is a dealer-proprietary system called AutoCheck that CarMax and most other dealerships use. The CarMax folks felt so bad for us so they let us call them with VINs on other used cars to help us out. Definitely recommend getting one of those run as opposed to Car Fax.


x2

My horse has a small collision reported on august the 16th 2001 in buzzards bay,MA.
When i called the buzzards bay PD to obtain more info about the report they said there's no such report on the files.

I don't trust 100% the carfax info,but rather use it in conjunction with carmax & autocheck by experian & more importantly,check with the DMV records as the always have the most accurate info about any vehicule registered in the US and its territories.

[handeeman]

A couple of years ago, one of my dealers traded in a 4-Runner. I noticed the glass had 3 different vin#'s etched on the glass. No big deal, the glass coulda been broken and replaced with used glass. However, none of the #'s matched the vin on the dash....then checking further. none of the vins's matched the door plate. So I turned the front wheels to the extreme left where you could see the vin # on the right side of the frame and lo and behold it didn't match any of the others. So ya had a vehicle that had been completely rebuilt..just for fun we ran a Car-Fax on all of the vins...and they all came back "Congratulations your vehicle qualifies for car-fax guarantee of $5000.00 as it has never been in an accident or reported stolen. I guess that's possible...you just take parts off 6, 4- Runners and build one.
I hope this one didn't end up in Colorado as it was a 4x4.
j/k...
It was sold for export as the title did match the dash plate. it went to S.Amer.