Just got done seeing a commercial for Carfax that says many reputable car dealers around the country will provide free Carfax reports on their vehicles. OK, I can see the business sense of this for used car dealers. It gives you a air of trustworthiness and inspires customer confidence. It works for Carfax because I’m sure it costs the dealer a few bucks to run the report.
But it leaves be wondering how valuable the report actually is. Where does Carfax get their data? How reliable is it supposed to be?
I have a car and I’ve maintained it reasonably well, however I’m pretty sure none of the maintenance I’d had done was logged anywhere, and if it it was it was probably only sporadically since I’ve had it serviced by numerous different people. If I trade my car into one of these “carfax dealers” and they give a new buyer a report on my car what kind of info will be on there? Where would they get it?
CARFAX® receives data from more than 20,000 different sources including every U.S. and Canadian provincial motor vehicle agency plus many police and fire departments, collision repair facilities, auto auctions, and more.
Yeah, seems they offer very little in the way of answers there. Saying they get data from Collision repair facilities and Service/ maintenance facilities without saying which ones or how many seems meaningless to me.
Sure, they get stuff from the DMV and Law Enforcement, but that seems like pretty thin info. Even when there’s an “accident” report there’s usually no detail about the types of damage.
Well they get the data but who’s to say it’s accurate?
I would like to see if Carfax has any independent auditors. I guess the best way to see is get a Carfax report for your own car and see what’s left out
I have done this a few times and IME the reports are pretty inclusive and accurate. As I’ve bought several used cars over the years, I tend to get the Carfax report to determine whether the car has been in any fender benders and to see past ownership of the vehicle, which gives you an idea of how it was treated. Fleet vehicles can tend to take some abuse, although have the most comprehensive maintenance records, whereas leased vehicles are treated pretty well (I don’t why as I’ve never leased). In the past, I opted for a term plan that allowed me to run as many VINs as I wanted to (handy when used car shopping). That made it simple to run my own vehicle and that of friends and family if they were interested in their own vehicles’ history.
Sometimes it does. When I bought my truck, the Carfax showed that it was a one-owner vehicle that was maintained regularly (yearly?) at the dealer it came from.
It’s very common to see maintenance records of fleet vehicles as well as leased vehicles or any vehicles that dealers maintain. It’s mostly dealership maintenance I expect you see as opposed to independent garages.
I’m not saying that every vehicle report comes with complete maintenance histories, but it is inaccurate to say that vehicle maintenance records are not available from Carfax. They are available and not all that rare.
ETA: I checked my maintenance records from Firestone and sure enough, my VIN is on the paperwork.
Well in California by law every repair order written on a car must have the full VIN so my guess is damn near all of them. Give me the last 8 digits of any VIN that has visited my shop and I can bring up the records in a couple of seconds.
Look here is the deal. If you buy a new car and take it to a local shop for service or do it yourself, it probably won’t show on Carfax. If you take it to the dealer, particularly if you have a free (or purchased it with the car) scheduled maintenance plan from the car maker, it will probably show. I am fairly sure that Carfax can access warranty records from the various car makers. This is the same database that a car dealer uses to A) verify eligibility for factory paid scheduled maintenance and B) Get paid by the factory for doing the same.
I know if a car comes in my service drive, I can search the VIN in the factory database to determine warranty history, eligibility for scheduled maintenance, and what maintenance has been done and where, as well as any outstanding recalls and service campaigns.
This is pretty much a large chunk of the data that Carfax supplies. Add to that records from the insurance companies and DMVs and you have a fairly complete report.
So how accurate is a Carfax report? Well if it says a car is a salvage title or has been wrecked, it probably has. If it says there is an outstanding recall, there probably is.
If it says the car has never been wrecked, it might be right. Or the car owner might have paid for the repairs himself, so no insurance company was involved.
when car shopping, I usually use Carfax as a method to “cull the herd” so to speak. I’ll pony up the $40/month for a month or two of unlimted Carfax reports. I generally spend $10,000 to $15,000 on my used cars so $80 is a pittance for some peace of mind.
Note, however, I DON’T use Carfax in lieu of taking a prospective car to my mechanic (believe it or not, I know some people who do! Idiots…). I simply use it to weed out the obviously…aromatic…clunkers.
I do exactly the same. I generally don’t spend more than $5k on a used vehicle, and because I have a relatively low budget, I find the $40 for the Carfax reports on first round of potentials, and the $40 or so for a mechanical check on the top choice(s) to be a sound investment. The minivan I scored for well under bluebook a couple years ago is still running well.
I used to drive a full-sized Bronco. One day I rear-ended some poor schmuck in a Taurus who stomped on his brakes to make a left turn he just noticed. That plus the fact I was following too closely on a damp street tried to put two objects in the same place at the same time.
What actually happened was his trunk was stove in from taillight to taillight & I got a deep nick on my plastic license plate frame.
When I went to trade my Bronco in 2 years later I got dinged a bunch for “damage history” from the Carfax report. I showed the dealer’s people the trivial nick, but they were adamant that their ability to resell was seriously impaired by the CarFax, so they had to price the trade-in accordingly.
My bottom line: Carfax does provide some valuable insight into vehicle history. But it also encourages a zero-tolerance attitude on the part of would-be buyers that is often at odds with reality.
This was my first inclination as well. Almost no questions with regards to a car’s value is of a Yes/No variety. If you get into a minor collision that causes no damage besides a paint scuff, no rare feat for city drivers, it’s still going to be reported as an “accident” by the lazy, put-upon cops writing the report, regardless of who’s at fault.
Note some data doesn’t show up in fashion timely; it’ll be batch processed months later in some cases.
On another board, a poster mentioned going to an auction lot and running Carfax on 10 of the cars in the “repo” part of the lot.
Not a single one turned up a hit for being repoed…
I could be wrong but I don’t believe Carfax reports this. I think it probably does indicate that the titleholder changed. Repossession doesn’t necessarily mean the car isn’t in good condition, does it? I would imagine barring accidents, recalls, and salvage information, repossession is just one of those things that doesn’t impact the value of the vehicle.
Still, I don’t think a repossession has all that much bearing on the value of the vehicle. It really makes no difference to me whether the previous owners defaulted on their loan.
I’m thinking the notion is that if you’re behind on the payments, you may have been unable or unwilling to pay for proper maintenance prior to the repossession being ordered.
For instance, one person I know ran his oil out to 23K miles rather than the advised 15K due to what he thought was an impending repo. Repo didn’t happen, as he got the finances in question straightened out, and the car was just fine regardless, but it’s a concern.
Perhaps the repo is DUE to problems in the car that the previous owner found.
I wouldn’t worry too much about a repo with 2000 miles and an intact warranty, but I would about a repo with 50K on it.