I see a lot of posts on the two car forums I participate in relying on CARFAX reports when checking out potential cars.

I've always suspected their service might be overrated. I'm curious as to how and where they get their information. Much of what they report is public domain out of state DMV databases. It's all well and good to know how many owners had their hands on a car you're thinking of buying, or how many different states it might have been titled in. But where would they get a record of a car being in an accident, or at least having been repaired?

I work at a large collision repair firm and I KNOW they don't have access to our records. Nobody does except the owner of the car and the insurance company (if any) involved. I seriously doubt that State Farm or Allstate allows CARFAX access to their records.

Their might be a way to test this, but I need someone with a currect CARFAX subscription and agreeable to running some VIN's. I can provide VIN's of vehicles with known collision repair history. I'd be curious what turns up on CARFAX.

Now the ethical questions... is this a violation of anyone's privacy? No names or other personal information will be revealed. In fact, the cars to be tested may very well have changed hands since the repair. I can even provide numbers for cars that I know have gone to the boneyard.

Anyone interested in helping out, or has this already been done? Or... is it just a bad idea.

-golfpro

 

why not just buy a carfax membership yourself?...

 

Good point. Actually, because it was just a thought that popped into my head last night when I read someone's post about how his car came up clean on CARFAX. It was just curiousity on my part. Personally, I don't care because I think their data is incomplete.

As I recall, when I used them 4 years ago, you get a "subscription" that allows multiple checks for a limited time. I figured it would be easy to piggy-back if someone had just subscribed.
-gp

 

Pretty much ALL they report is DMV records. Carfax does not claim to report all accidents. But they would catch accidents that resulted in a title change (e.g. salvage title issued) or in the handful of states that record accident repairs on the DMV record.

Andrew

 

There you go. I thought it was something like that. Next to worthless if you're trying to find out if the car you're thinking of buying has ever been wrecked.

I would suggest that the solution would be to take the car to a local repair shop and have one of their estimators look it over. There are always telltale clues that a car's been worked on or painted that might not be obvious to the average person.
-gp