CarFax mythinformation
 

I'm moving this here to not distract from other thread

Originally Posted by Tarek307
actually my biggest cost is Carfax $478/month..ouch

My reply:
That's such a racket! I hate carfax! I get that you need to know if a car has a negative report on carfax so that you can say "clean carfax" but $478 that's ridiculous. It would be one thing if you could rely on it being thorough or something and know a car hasn't been in an accident but it has such a narrow Buy in that 99.9% of all accidents don't end up on carfax

Originally Posted by maninblack
Interesting. Please state your source.

My reply:
I'm the source. Which accidents end up on carfax versus which do not? DMV does not report accidents to carfax, private individuals with an accident don't report to carfax, very few insurance companies if any(this is still being disputed)report to carfax, so that begs the question who does report to carfax? It seems that they get total loss data presumably through DMV, it seems that they get limited police/highway patrol accident reports through public record I presume? The fact is virtually no one cooperates with them so virtually no accidents show up on carfax. It's literally the rare occasion and weird circumstances that it does. That is where my 99.9% comes from. I'm in the collision repair business. I have fixed thousands of cars since carfax has been around and I only know of 2 that ended up on carfax. One through a police report and one mysteriously. I'll give the benefit of the doubt that several others have ended up on there as well and were not disclosed to me. As Tarek said great for salvage title and I'll say the occasional mileage rollback but other than that rarely an accident appears. If you want to be uber generous and say 80% of all accidents do not apppear on there that is still ridiculously incomplete.

From Maninblack:
OK. So there is no source. Note taken.

Carfax isn't perfect. It's just one tool among many. But to throw out a number of 99.9%, or 80%, or anything really, based on the anecdotal "evidence" you reference is ridiculous. Some of us come here to learn and we appreciate those who can share real information. If you can find some, that would be helpful. Otherwise, you're doing more harm than good.

Why is my personal experience and knowledge ridiculous? Where does this "Real" information come from? People can only learn from this Real information but not from let's say a home garage mechanic or weekend warrior? What's the point of this forum and this market place "discussion" if individuals like myself aren't a source of information because it's not "Real"?

You may want to correct title of the thread- "mythinformation"

Your 99% assumption is definitely wrong. They are usually pretty good, but not perfect- i like to combine carfax info w Auto check as well.

The 86 911 i was looking at said it had been stolen in 1986 from the dealer then says recovered 3 months later than says a month later involved in collision declared total loss. The owner had no idea as carfax said info reported 2013 - So actually believe the info is wrong and the owner just needs to fix it, or that car really had a rough start in its life lol

Mythinformation was not a mistake lol it's what I and several others in the collision industry like to call an abundance of information that we are being fed that is actually false and in some cases somewhat mythical. When you say they are "usually pretty good" what are you referring to? When you are on the other side of the equation and a car has a clean carfax or autocheck or whatever what do you compare that to to know that it truly is accident free? I do a lot of inspections for clients looking to buy cars. They only bring me cars that have clean carfax reports. I would say 50% or greater of those cars I indentify previous accident damage and poor repair indentifiers.

Don't get me wrong I would use Carfax as a tool to to verify if there is any information contained on the carfax report but I would never in a million years use it to give the car a clean bill of health. It simply has a clean carfax report and I would very emphatically explain to my customers that is by no means a safe way to determine the car's accident history

Carfax gives lazy people a warm and fuzzy. There is no substitute for looking.

Remember that '86 that was for sale on here a few months ago and wound up on BAT? That car had a clean Carfax and a keen eyed individual spotted that the rear fender had been replaced. The owner didn't know that either.

My son bought a used truck a couple years ago. It had a clean Carfax. Once he starte looking it over it clearly had some replacement sheetmetal. That happens ALL THE TIME. 99.9% may be high. However, I would bet a $100 the number is over 50%

I agree. Carfax is just one data point.

i just sold a '13 WRX wagon to carmax. i had a rough time with that car, spun a rod bearing twice (that's 2 new motors, thanks subaru!), then my wife was rear ended in it while waiting for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. bare in mind this was a grocery getter/soccer mom car for us, not a hot rod.

that was the last straw, car had to go. fixed the rear end, and when my BMW wagon finally showed up i took it to carmax to unload it. i was fearful i was going to take a huge hit because of the motor replacements and the accident.

i was beyond stoked when my rep came back with a "clean carfax!" and offered the very top of what i thought i might get.

can't say i'll ever put much into a carfax moving forward.

and i definitely won't buy another subaru...

$478?

Unlimited Reports for $69.99 (Unlimited Reports by U.S. License Plate)
5 CARFAX Reports for $59.99
1 CARFAX Report for $39.99

US license plate is a joke. You need to get report by VIN# and $478 because i'm a very small operation, i have a friend that actually owns a dealer lot and he pays $650/month for unlimited. They also monitor to make sure dealers aren't sharing one account- if that happens they black ball the dealer and you lose a very important tool..

I suspect that is individual rate, not commercial. They know the individual will only pay for a month or so until they buy a car. May even be small print about max 3 months or something similar.

Using that shyte 0w/40 oil they suggest? They also run really lean on CA dinosaur piss.

You're kidding, right? Am I the only person here with any experience in data analysis? Statistics? Even basic math for God's sake? If I need to explain to you why your personal experiences don't amount to data, we're going to need a much bigger forum.

If we're going to have a conversation about the value of Carfax - a tool many people use and others might consider using based on what they read here - we should at least try to be reasonably factual in our comments. And if you'd like to be taken seriously in this conversation, you should refrain from using numbers like 99.9%.

So would me saying that in my 19 years in the collision business it has been MY experience that 99.9% of all repairs that we have done do not end up on carfax change things for you? If you were to ask me I would tell you that I have repaired roughly 12,000 cars. Is 12,000 cars not an ok sample to use for me to form a conclusion? I gave the benefit of the doubt that not every single one of my clients followed up with carfax or with me for that matter so perhaps 80% is more realistic number. Another member ventured to guess 50%. In any event is 50% adequate to be reliable? Hell no. Are you arguing just to argue? Give me your fortune 500 companies input on carfax like you did with Yelp. Come on enlighten me, tell me what percentage of car accidents end up on carfax. Give me a number and tell me how you derived that number. I am not only using my personal experience but that of thousands of other repairers that all discuss this **** on our collision groups as its a hot topic. I'm combining those opinions and experiences with the fact that no one likes carfax, no one cooperates with them, they are a greedy, ****ty company that gives false hopes and does not disclose how virtually no accidents end up on carfax.

They may not show on carfax rite away but for the most part if it was a repair where insurance or police report were involved it should show eventually. 99% and now 99.9% is just a little much lol..they are a greedy company and they created an atmosphere where dealers are their hostage & MUST use them, and also created false sense of hope for customers.

Couple of years ago i sold my 996 that i had hit a chair on the fwy with and had to replace several things, and a year later wasn't on carfax, however i made sure to add in the for sale ad that this had happened but just isn't showing on carfax

yes, and yes, unfortunately.

lesson learned. first one happened before the second oil change, car was brand new...

No, that doesn't make any difference at all. Your data has no integrity. Actually, your data has no data.

On the other hand, if you told me that after repairing each of these 12,000 cars over the last 19 years, and after waiting an appropriate amount of time for CarFax to collect data from their sources, you then ran a CarFax 12,000 times to collect the relevant data on each individual vehicle post-repair, that would be a different story.

But that's not the case, is it? Because, A) that would have cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, B) you would have had no incentive to start collectng CarFax data to prove a point in a discussion you didn't know you'd be having 19 years in the future, and C) If you really did have any data you wouldn't be spouting idiocy like 99.9%.

As we all know that's the case, I think we can all agree that you're just talking out of your a** as part of the Pelican bomb-throwers club. But we get it. You don't like CarFax. That's cool. I don't like bananas. Same methodology.

And that's the end of my 8th grade statistics class.

They've really screwed the pooch on the newer turbo cars. It's ironic that one has to buy a Cobb Accessport and retune the car to make it reliable.

That said, I wouldn't write off Subarus. Just avoid the turbo models. The 3.6 NA engine in the Outback is a pretty nice set up.