2 replies to this topic

[flash]

I have been reading and hearing more and more reports about CARFAX errors. It seems that the more popular it gets, the more errors are popping up. It has now been showing up in the news, and there are countless results in an internet search.

Of course we know that omissions regarding accidents and such are common. That is to be expected when the owner does not report something.

The real issue is the specific vehicle information, and even the VIN not matching the car. I have now heard of no less than a dozen reports from people I know about various cars being reported as either a different model, different delivery information, or even a completely different car.

It appears that the information is only as good as the person who enters the data.

The estimates of errors are in the neighborhood of 5-10% of their records having some sort of data entry error.

So, take what you get from them with a grain of salt. It's still a decent resource, but definitely not without its share of errors.


They aren't alone though either. Car manufacturers have their share too. Even Porsche's database is full of errors. I've found a bunch of those already, and there is data on a whole lot more. There are even a bunch of cars that don't show up in the database from PCNA.



Bottom line, if you're looking at a car, check it out yourself.

[chudson]

EXACTLY! I read Carfax and Autocheck because I know the person buying the car from me will also BUT MOST CORRECT they can be full of errors.

Unknown by many is that most insurance companies consider a settlememt on a car to be proprietary information and DO NOT / WILL NOT share it with any fact gathering organization or third party! This is straight from the mouth of one of the largest insurers in the country.

And manufacturer info? When I was racing VWs I was in the factory parts listings all the time. ALWAYS stumbling on errors!

One of the reasons they have these things they call "revisions".......and not everything gets revised!

Read the reports, but evaluate the car for what it IS and not for what something says

I once bought a car listed as "frame damaged". The bolt on tow hook / tie down was bent in the fender bender. Body shop reported frame. Because of that report it was sold to me WAY back of the book value.

[flash]

yup - and we all know that the factory stickers are constantly reprinted at the port distribution centers, to reflect changes to the car that had to be made for whatever reason (interior changes, color changes, resprays, option changes, etc) after it left the manufacture - but what most don't know is that they don't update the factory records to pick up those changes - they don't have to - as long as the sticker shows what the car is at the time of sale, that's all that is legally required - they don't have to update their own database - a bit of a bummer if you want to trace a classic, but it would be ridiculously expensive to have to keep track of al that stuff, so i get it

so, check out the car yourself - that's the only way to know what it is, what it has, and what shape it's in - don't trust some third party manually maintained database