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When buying a car, our instincts beckon us to be absolutely sure of what we are getting ourselves into. We ask questions such as: Are there any problems with the car? Has it ever been in an accident? Has it been well cared for and carefully maintained? Of course when dealing with sellers, it can sometimes be difficult to assess the degree of truth behind the state of the car. When finding oneself in such a position, a logical thing to do is consult Carfax.
Carfax is a company in which you can order a report that shows the history of a particular car. You can visit their website and pay $34.99 for a single car report or you can pay an extra ten bucks and get reports on five cars. If you go on their site, they check for specific information about a car such as the number of owners, accident history, hail damage and much more. To better understand how a carfax report works, check out a sample of a report. By enlisting the services of Carfax, we may be comforted in having the assurance that the car in question has never been wrecked nor had any major issues. But how does Carfax track down the history of a car? What a valid and interesting question. What they do is compile information from thousands of sources that may connect to the specific car in which you are inquiring. Now that is wonderful! But often times, the human intuition of skepticism kicks in and questions the accuracy of Carfax. Is this something that we should expect to rely on? That is for you to decide.
One of my fellow colleagues has experience working at a car dealership. He gave me some helpful information about Carfax: ”I have found them pretty trustworthy and would personally trust them myself if I was looking at a pre-owned vehicle in our inventory. The only thing I know that maybe should have went on there that didn’t was some hail damage. It has to be over a certain amount of money in damages to be required to be reported to Carfax”. Another source that I spoke to during my investigation on the issue stated that: “My dad got a car after getting the carfax report on it and it runs really well 7 years later!”
On the other hand, I asked a local mechanic about Carfax and he stated that mechanics are not required to report repairs. For this reason, many repairs on cars are entirely unknown to Carfax. This suggests that cars repaired from accidents are off of the radar as well. Also, non-disclouser agreements from certain insurance companies keeps reports from the grasp of Carfax. Unfortunately, in some cases Carfax can mistakenly report a wrecked car as accident free. Even with a Carfax report, it can still be difficult to be completely sure if you aren’t getting ripped off. Some individuals have even examined Carfax reports on their own automobiles to find false information reported about their vehicles. Even as the original owners of these vehicles, it can be difficult to sell their car for the asking price once it has been mistakenly red flagged by Carfax.
From all of this information, I personally cannot justify Carfax as an accurate source that would dictate my decision upon whether to buy a car or not. This of course, is just my opinion. However, I would say that it wouldn’t necessarily be worthless to consult a Carfax report. This is what I would recommend to my readers: If you are on the verge of selling your car, be sure to procure as much documentation that you can find regarding past maintenance records on your automobile. If you can, ask your insurance company to provide you documentation that your car is indeed accident free and without any major problems (Assuming that it is). Buyers will be much more comfortable seeing first-hand evidence of repair work done on a car. So if you can, let them hear it from you instead of having to hear it from Carfax. At Military Car Lot, we hope that sellers and buyers will be as fair to each other as possible. Especially within the military community. So, if Carfax is what it takes for you to be slightly more assured about buying a car, ask the seller to order a report for you. After all, it couldn’t hurt. If you’re trying to sell your car, having a Carfax report on hand before you sell it might make your offer to buyers even more attractive. It just might be worth the extra 35 bucks to push a potential buyer over the edge.
