accuracy of carfax reports
 

Just curious to see if any one else had this particular problem. A friend of mine was used car shopping, and paid for this service, and we ran a bunch of VINs for the hell of it. I discovered a serious discrepancy with a carfax report on 2 of my older diesels.

It was totally inaccurate on both of them.

One, an 83 with about 220,000 miles was reported as sold to me with 190,000 miles a year before I bought it, and reported as sold again with 250,000 miles even though It was totaled in my ownership at 225,000 miles!

The second one, an 83 with 320,000 miles at the time of purchase, was reported as sold to me accurately with the correct mileage, then afterwords recorded as in a collision marked at 200,000 miles! 120,000 miles less than the sale which was recorded as 6 months prior. I owned that car for 2.5 years with no accidents.

My conclusion is that the carfax program is not to be trusted if you are someone who has owned lots of the same model car in the same year range with similar mileage. Things got hopelessly confused, and some information from all 7 of my 123s owned over the years, as well as totally bogus information, was mixed into both reports.

I work at a dealership, so I'm quite familar with carfax. A carfax report on an older car like your diesels are gonna be wildly inaccurate. Carfax only gives you a glimpse of what's going on with the car, especially if it's younger than 10 years. Sometimes, accidents appear years after they happen, multiple owners are reported when it's only 1 owner, etc. etc. You can't fully trust it but it's usually better than nothing.

I don't even bother - just do a careful eval, negotiate & pull the cash out of my pocket. Better deal with cash but you'd better choose wisely because now you own it.

If it can't be fully trusted, it's worse than nothing.

and lest we forget, sadly, Carfax charges $$$$$$ for this inaccurate trash.
of course, somewhere on their web site or other public writings, there it
is written in microprint, "our reports may not be accurate, proceed at your
own risk, yada yada yada".

... and if you do find that your 4month old car that you just bought was involved in a very serious accident and repaired, and Carfax didn't have it on the report, you will probably find as he did that they won't even refund your carfax fee because it is only guaranteeing that it will be on the report if it was reported to them!

I believe if you have a account you can go in and put notes in for said VIN

Its a waste of money. I have never Carfaxed any vehical I bought and never will, unless its offered for free. I won't pay for it though.

I've had a carfax on one of our cars, it was semi accurate, however it took 4 years for it to show that the car's title was transferred to florida..

ALL the Dealers,Shysters and assorted auto Bottom Feeders
 

Figured out how to circumvent carfax about 15 minutes after it appeared
And immediately set about sharing the info with each other.

It should be filed under: "Fairy Tales"

I only get a carfax to see where the car has been, which states and what not just because I think it's cool. I could care less about owners, title changes and all the crap. I'll look at it, but it's not the main reason I purchase it. Thankfully I was able to get a free one on my moms X5 only to find it was in Washington before we got it! Pretty cool.