How accurate/reliable is Carfax?!?!

[RockJock]

Any thoughts? Do they ever miss crucial $hit? What about other services ..... AutoCheck anyone? TIA!

[BMWCCA1]

They ALWAYS miss crucial ****. It's a racket. Not all the stuff they say they have access to is available. It's pretty worthless if you rely on a clean report. It's somewhat less worthless if it happens to stumble upon a flaw, wreck, or odo change. There have even been some suits against them as I recall. The system of registration and inspection data they mine just doesn't contain all the information on every car like they promise. AutoCheck seems to be a bit better but they still can't possibly do what they say they do. The data doesn't exist. All my cars have clean Carfaxes. Even the Toyoto pickup I killed a deer with and the insurance company totalled out, sold back to me, and I pulled it back into shape by chaining it to a telephone pole with a come-along. Even the hail damaged 535i from Florida I bought off Ebay several years ago. Even my pristine E34 with its clean Carfax and 121-point check from AutoAdvantage that the second owner bought with a repainted rear fender. I told the seller, tongue in cheek, that there was no such thing as a perfect AA car! Then I showed him the body and paint work. I even owned a BMW that was stolen out of a shop and recovered by the police a month later, in a creek, with the robbery covered in the local paper. The car had a $4000 insurance claim. You guessed it; clean CarFax.

So, use it, just don't depend on it.

[repenttokyo]

they miss stuff in Canada a lot - so if your car was ever registered north of the border, you might have some gaps.

[Ross]

Near worthless. Especially for older cars where a nominal amount of damage can result in a "total loss" and it's stigma.
On newer cars, especially expensive ones, aka BMWs, VERY hard hits are repaired due to the vaue of the car.
Mileage is accurately or not collected by servicers and viewed as gospel by Carfax.
How often a car has changed hands is sometimes indicative as is a "branded" title. You don't need carfax to discover a branded title.
These services are sales tools for dealers so figure for yourself.

[BMWDriver]

Inspection is a must. I looked at a nice 1990 e30, it drove nice. I liked it. Then at the garage, it became obvious the trunk had all been replaced, the welding was badly done and the battery was close to falling due to rust. The underside was really ugly and rusty.

The owner had it looked up, trusted it had not been damaged as reported.

The inspection is the best 40$ I ever spent.

[Macv]

carfax is as accurate as the claims presented to it.

A lot of problems occur under the table. I've never bothered with a carfax, its pointless.

[BMWDriver]

I agree with Macv.

I actually asked the PO of my e34 who her mechanic was, and she let me call. Then I asked my trusty mechanic about the guy, and he said good things. It's a small world.

It turns out to be a good e34 with not much rust in spite of the very high mileage. And the engine is running just excellent. I just love it. I only whish I had a garage to tinker on it more, and maybe some money for some nice wheels. I envy a lot of the guys here, but I still think my car is sexy enough as stock.

It's a wild world out there.

[brosher]

It's a good tool for some things, but I wouldn't rely on it for anything.

For example, I just bought a car and the guy says he has owned it for 3 years. I was able to run autocheck and see when he registered it and that the same person renewed the reg for the past three years. It seems to be pretty good at identifying the # of owners but not perfect. Also you can see which owner racked up the miles.