got boned by Carfax...sort of. Ever hear of this happening?

So I went to trade my truck in this past week, got all of the details sorted out, shook hands on the deal, and presumably bought a new-to-me vehicle. The salesman comes back to me about 5 minutes later and says 'Hey. You never told us you were in a significant accident with your truck. This will definitely affect the resale as it is showing on Carfax.' I didn't believe him at all. I bought that truck off the showroom floor with 1.1 miles on it, and I can assure you that it has never hit anything before. I ask to see the Carfax, and sure enough it says 12/17/12- Right front collision with utility pole- significant damage reported. Tow away.

What in the actual berkeley is going on? That... never happened! I didn't even buy the truck until 12/22. How is that possible? Did the dealer stuff the truck and do a midnight fix and throw it on the floor??!? Improbable, but not impossible I suppose. At this point, I'm quite pissed. They want an additional $3000 for the accident damage to resale and I do not want to pay that. On the other hand, I will go to another dealer(s) and have the same crap to deal with with them.

Then, it clicked. I totalled my previous truck (Nissan Titan) shortly before buying the Dodge. It was a right front collision with a utility pole in black ice... What day was that? I remember it being a Monday. What Monday was that? 12/17. Somehow the VIN's must have been transposed at some level, and the accident was tagged to my new replacement truck rather than the Nissan. Sure enough, I pulled the VIN for the truck I actually did total, and it's got a clean carfax, aside from being sold to salvage.

In the end, I ended up throwing in $1000 to offset this mess. I'd love to find out who is responsible for this, although I know for a fact that I'm not going to get anywhere with it. It's no longer my vehicle to care. Has anyone ever heard of this happening before, and does anyone know at what exact point carfax gets reported to with regards to collisions?

Thanks in advance.

I bought a '87 Supra Turbo from the original owner. Had original bill of sale, plate, everything. When I listed the car on Evil Bay, their auto check said it was a 5 owner car... Not a damn thing I could do, except show the buyer the original paperwork. Made my ad, and me look like a liar to potential buyers.

Not that it matters at this point since the deal is completed, but it seems to me these questions should have been made to car fax customer service. A copy of the Titans accident report and the purchase paperwork for the traded truck seem to be more than enough evidence to support to make them to alter the data. My bet is the dealership that owns your truck now is on the phone with them already.

Carfax customer service proved to be about as useful as tits on a bull. The lovely lady I spoke with said that Carfax is an automated, VIN specific program and errors like that "simply don't happen". She basically called me a liar and told me there was nothing I could do.

Regardless, I did get a letter from my insurance company detailing that zero claims were filed on the Dodge, and that the exact same scenario'd accident occurred on the exact same day with a different truck of a different VIN. I gave it to the dealer and wished them luck. If they clear it, great... but honestly I was so frustrated with the entire system that I simply didn't care enough to fight to clear it myself.

Insurance companies, Carfax, and the dealer... all pointing fingers at a different party. Nobody is at fault.

welcome to my life.

i hate carfax so, so much.

i buy and sell cars for a living.

i can't remember the last time i read a carfax report and learned something tangible about a car that I couldn't figure out for myself after a 5 minute walk around.

on the other hand, i run into a major deal-berking descrepancy on a monthly basis. at least.

You got something against bull titties?

This is not a Carfax issue. This likely is a clerical issue by your insurance company. They enter VIN numbers into their database, which gets reported to a central database. That central database is where Carfax buys their info. The odd thing is that the VIN number for your Titan would have been the only one they had at the time of loss, since you hadn't bought the other one yet. My guess would be that they didn't upload the collision data to the central database for some time, which is not uncommon. How your new VIN got mixed in with the collision is strange, as most insurance companies have a software system for claims, and a separate one for underwriting. Perhaps there was a computer snafu when data was uploaded by the insurance company, where it went to the wrong system to grab the VIN (I've seen those kinds of errors before). Either way, very likely...well, pretty much certain...that occurred at the insurance company level.

golfduke wrote: Carfax customer service proved to be about as useful as tits on a bull. The lovely lady I spoke with said that Carfax is an automated, VIN specific program and errors like that "simply don't happen". She basically called me a liar and told me there was nothing I could do.

Can't be the case. Over in the other carfax thread a few folk proclaimed carfax wonderfully helpful at fixing mistakes with an easy-peasy 2-second process.

Seriously though, your experience with them mirrors mine. Much information is wrong, nothing can be fixed.

The main thing I use Car Fax for is to see where a car spent its life.

In reply to Klayfish:

And that's fine it wasn't their error, carfox should be able to fix it(if we are to believe some people luckier than myself) Golfduke unfortunately got the same end around bs I did several years ago.

spitfirebill wrote: The main thing I use Car Fax for is to see where a car spent its life.

I used to think a clean carfax meant nothing and a dirty carfax meant something.

Now I think a clean carfax means nothing and a dirty carfax means "check for evidence that this damage is not a fiction"

did you transfer the plate from teh crashed truck to the new truck back in the day?

I once bought a car that turned out to have had a major collision, yet Carfax gave it a clean bill of health. Turns out that vehicles that are totaled by uninsured motorists are very popular subjects for hack shops to paste back together again and sell as "clean".

Sadly the only way the carfax gets the news of issues is when the repair shop puts thru the communication to them. Talk the shop out of sharing the info and you're in business. Best bet ito understand any issues i just recently learned. Call your insurance company before the buy and have them run the vin. They have access to a whole different database.

84FSP wrote: Sadly the only way the carfax gets the news of issues is when the repair shop puts thru the communication to them.

As reported in the other thread, car fax comes up with things all by themselves.

in 06 my wife bought an 04 ion with a clean carfax. it had a 1/4 panel replaced badly. it leaked at the trunk seal and the pinstripe didn't even match the other side. i don't even bother with carfax anymore.

I predicted years ago that Carfax would wind up in a class action lawsuit for diminished value claims that were bogus. We're getting closer. Surely there must be a hungry lawyer out there willing to take this on? (and hopefully put these morons out of business).

Too many greedy bastards hold sway over our lives that we cannot control. Credit agencies, the stock market, cable companies, politicians, etc. I just try to win little victories whenever I can.

It turned out that my brand new 1996 VW GTI had most likely been repainted, or at least CarMax claimed when I sold it. They did a good job, possibly better than the factory paint. Since it was hecho en Mexico, it's also possible that there was just that much paint overspray.

ddavidv wrote: I predicted years ago that Carfax would wind up in a class action lawsuit for diminished value claims that were bogus. We're getting closer. Surely there must be a hungry lawyer out there willing to take this on? (and hopefully put these morons out of business).

seriously. The only thing I can think of is that they screw consumers out of that 'just right' amount of money where it's not crippling, but it still berkeleying stings.

I looked at an e9X 328i at CarMax. Mid test drive we stopped to look it over more closely w/o the scrutiny of the sales droids. I realized it had been entirely repainted, and not particularly well.

The sales droids lying ability when told why I wasn't interested in the car was stupendously bad for a vehicle sales professional.