I just got my car fax account and started running some of my current VIN's just out of curiosity. As suspected, I found nothing. Then I remembered a car I had from 1996-1998. An Acura TL. 2 weeks before I was supposed to return the car on lease, I was taking a turn and the rear came around (deadmans curve in Tampa on Memorial Highway) and the car did a 180 and I wiped the passenger side out against a guardrail. $14,000 in repair cost, but I was ok. Car wasn't totalled, but I ended up selling it to the body shop.
The car fax reports shows nothing, not a single item of the accident.
Sooooooo, take the report with a grain of salt. It can only report what is loaded onto some database. Definitely not foolproof.

 

Thanks for the story, but I think most people realize that only whats reported they know. They actually say that several times on the site.

Erik

 

it's better than nothing, don't cha think?

 

Not all states require all accidents be reported to the DMV. So, in many instances you won't see the history of a car's accident unless the insurance company declared it totaled.

 

Did you file a claim with your insurance company? Because if you did not, and sold the car to a bodyshop, they fixed it and resold with a clean history..

 

Carfax has some kind of 5,000$ warranty at the bottom of every report. I'm not sure how long it is good for or what the exact terms are, but I believe it's 30 days and you get 5 grand if the reported info is not accurate.. still doesn't help much if you just purchased a wrecked and fixed M5..

Better thing to do is to check for all VIN # stickers in the inside of the doors, fenders, trunk lining, even bumpers.. find out where these stickers are supposed to be on the car you are looking at and look for them... Body shops take all stickers off when they re-paint body parts or get aftermarket ones as a result of an accident.. If I knew this when i was buying my 98 max i would have known it was hit in the front, 1 fender was repainted or replaced, although they did a good job and the car has not given me any problems in a year.

Carfax is a good source for seeing the # of owners and where the car came from, also if it failed any inspections and such.. but even things like milage are not always that accurate.. if someone rolls the miles back before every inspection, you will never know...

 

Yeah Ive used Carfax with much success over the years. But I too out of curiosity entered the VINs of all the cars I could get the VIN off of. I checked the VIN of my first car which was a 89 Ford Taurus. I was in a serious accident with the car but I never got it repaired professionaly (didnt have collision insurance had to do my own "ghetto" repairs to pass Mass safety inspections) This accident didnt show up cause it was never officaly reported to the DMV.

But what was really funny was the fact that I found out the Taurus had 249,000 miles on it and it had a red flag with an odometer discrepency, and I thaught it only had 149,000 miles on it. When I bought it the seller told me it only had 111,000 miles on it when in reality it had 211,000 miles on it (didnt have carfax when I bought the car if I did I wouldnt have gotten the car). The odometer on those cars only goes up to 99,999 miles and then rolls over to 0. According to Car fax it hit 170,000 miles back in 1996 when it was sold to someone else. I ended up buying the car in 1999 with 211,000 miles but not knowing it due to a lack of carfax.

The moral of the story is Carfax works but its not 100% perfect but its better than having nothing.

 

Yeah, I agree taht is is just a single tool. I would never just depend on it only. When the TL was wrecked, the insurance company cut me a check for the repair and I just signed it over to the bodyshop, so as far as the insurance company (State Farms) was concerned, they had the vehicle repaired. And it was repaired by the shop and resold.

 

my car and my girlfriend's car both got in an accident and both were reported to the insurance. Later on(only a few months after accident), I ran a CARFAX and both cars came out clean.

 

I thought God was the one that did the data entry for the carfax database

 

didn't the TL come out in 99?


edit: i was wrong

 

Sometimes it takes a while to go through...upwards of a year.

Erik

 

I posted my story before. When I sold my previous car, '92 NX2000, one buyer shown me the Carfax report indicating there is an odometer rollback. The problem is there is no way it could happen because it shows the rollback was done during my length of owndership. Plus it shows the previous own drove over 200k miles in one year.

 

hey they can mess up the info as well, its all humans making entries..but it'd be a pain to clear up the mess..