My experience with Carfax vehicle history reports hasn’t been good. In my opinion, these need to be taken only semi-seriously as a buying tool, since they only show what was reported to them. I’ve also found that their descriptions of “maintenance” visits sometimes aren’t at all reflective of the true reason for the service.
same here. I bought a Hyundai Sonata with 450 miles on it from a dealer once…the CarFax report was clean when I bought it. When I went to trade it in, the CarFax report came back showing the car had been in an accident before I had purchased it, and before the car had even been at the dealer who sold it to me. Absolutely no details about the accident on the report. It ended up costing me over $1000 in trade-in value. I contacted CarFax and they said that the accident was reported AFTER I had purchased the vehicle. I called the original dealer and they were as mad as I was, but there was honestly nothing they could do about it. The guy where I was trading in the car said that he sees this stuff all the time, but that there was nothing he could do since the report showed the vehicle had been in an accident before, it would affect its resell value.
Their product is worthless and should not be used as gospel by dealers when determining price or trade-in value.
Wvagt…you are so right! CARFAX is only as good as the data that is reported, keeping in mind that they have a TON of data (billions of records). The accident reports come DIRECTLY from the agency that filed the report.
With regards to accident reports, CARFAX doesn’t charge a fee for these. The fee would be assessed depending on the agency that is providing the report…CARFAX is merely providing an online convenience. That means that if you pay for it through CARFAX, you will pay for it at the police department as well. Hope this helps you understand the service a bit better.
My experience with Carfax vehicle history reports hasn’t been good. In my opinion, these need to be taken only semi-seriously as a buying tool, since they only show what was reported to them. I’ve also found that their descriptions of “maintenance” visits sometimes aren’t at all reflective of the true reason for the service.
same here. I bought a Hyundai Sonata with 450 miles on it from a dealer once…the CarFax report was clean when I bought it. When I went to trade it in, the CarFax report came back showing the car had been in an accident before I had purchased it, and before the car had even been at the dealer who sold it to me. Absolutely no details about the accident on the report. It ended up costing me over $1000 in trade-in value. I contacted CarFax and they said that the accident was reported AFTER I had purchased the vehicle. I called the original dealer and they were as mad as I was, but there was honestly nothing they could do about it. The guy where I was trading in the car said that he sees this stuff all the time, but that there was nothing he could do since the report showed the vehicle had been in an accident before, it would affect its resell value.
Their product is worthless and should not be used as gospel by dealers when determining price or trade-in value.
That may be true for vehicle history reports, but what does it have to do with offering crash reports from police departments?
That we now get to pay for something that’s usually free?
If you can’t trust one of their products, why would you trust another?
Wvagt…you are so right! CARFAX is only as good as the data that is reported, keeping in mind that they have a TON of data (billions of records). The accident reports come DIRECTLY from the agency that filed the report.
With regards to accident reports, CARFAX doesn’t charge a fee for these. The fee would be assessed depending on the agency that is providing the report…CARFAX is merely providing an online convenience. That means that if you pay for it through CARFAX, you will pay for it at the police department as well. Hope this helps you understand the service a bit better.
-Nicole