How does Carfax work? If someone wrecks and pays cash for a repair, does it end up in Carfax? I assume not. What about claims that go thru insurance companies? Do ALL cars that are wrecked and repaired by insurance get a Carfax "record"...even ones that involve only minimal or surface damage? I'd like to know more about how Carfax gets info and how info does NOT end up in Carfax.
Typically not, Carfax usually only will report if the car has been totaled or is a flood car.
Experience varies. Several years ago we bought a 91 Honda Civic from a coworker and for grins ran it through carfax. CarFax came back with a 'hit' for suspicious mileage due to an odometer discrepancy. Cars have to get an annual inspection here in Texas and it seems one year the grease monkey screwed up and wrote down an 8 where it should have been a 3, in other words, the inspection report showed 80k miles on the car (back in
1994) when it in fact only had 30-some. Then the following year the next inspection showed the CORRECT mileage, this time 40k-something. We know the seller personally (neighbor + long-time coworker) and had no reason to suspect odometer tampering, but the CarFax report came back with a black mark because of some high school dropout's stupid mistake. The seller subsequently contacted Carfax about the error but they refused to change their records.CarFax will usually catch junk (salvage) titles which would indicate prior major damage or a flood car. They will also usually catch if the car had ever been used in livery (for hire) service, such as a taxicab or if it had previously been owned by an auto leasing or car rental agency.
IMO a CarFax report is a good >Typically not, Carfax usually only will report if the car has been totaled
Reports of wrecks which don't total the car aren't guaranteed to be there. If somebody whacks their car into a tree, pays cash, and doesn't notify the authorities, its not going to show up on CarFax. If somebody whacks their car into somebody else, and the authorities are called out, it MAY show up on the CF. CF gets its info from (presumably all) state title databases, some inspection databases, and some police record databases. I've seen wrecked (but not totaled) cars have the wreck info show up on CarFax, others were obviously wrecked (but again, not totaled) and no info showed up on CarFax. I own a Mazda RX-7 which has records on CarFax every time I filed a claim with the aftermarket warranty company.
Would a CarFax subscriber be so kind and run this VIN for me? JT8BH28F2W0108360
Thanks
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