“Show me the Car Fax”; the advertisement seems to play thousands of times per week. The ad also seems to elude to “don’t buy a car without seeing it” but, is it accurate?

In concept, Car Fax can be a fantastic tool; a resource where consumers and dealers alike can research a vehicles history and help them to better determine if a car has never been damaged or if there are any title issues with a car that they are considering purchasing, terrific concept- really. It is a tool that we freely admit to using often, we just don’t rely on it fully, nor should the consumer.

It is important to understand that not all service work or damage to a vehicle is reported to Car Fax, in fact, we have been surprised as to how little information actually makes it to a report that one pays for- and quite dearly we might ad. Service and repair facilities-even dealerships- do not always report when a car has been serviced. Copies of the cars maintenance records may be a better source of information.

We are not exactly certain how Car Fax collects all of its data, though we are pretty certain that had a vehicle been involved in an accident and a police report not filed or an insurance company not contacted; no information regarding that particular repair would be listed. We have inspected many cars on which we had run a Car Fax report and though the report was “clean” prior accident damage or paint work was most certainly evident.

Consumers are certainly concerned about anything that could potentially increase their expenses. Reporting an accident to an insurer could raise insurance premiums, therefore, many consumers will simply pay for accident damage “out of pocket” This could also mean that the same damage was - or never will be- reported to Car Fax and/or other vehicle history reporting agency’s. We are not singling out Car Fax here, as there are other reporting agency’s who offer this same basic service. Car Fax however, does seem to advertise their service more than others and our point here, is that no vehicle reporting agency is the holy grail of vehicle history truth and just because a vehicles history report may come back as “clean” does NOT insure that the car is!

A good friend of ours was recently considering the purchase of a Porsche. He wisely paid for a Car Fax report and it came back as “clean”. Perhaps even more wisely, he paid to run a report from another like company and the report came back as the same vehicle having had previous frame damage. Smart man that “Luke” J

We are not suggesting that Car Fax or any other vehicle history reporting agency should not be used, as we have previously stated; we do use their services…though more for title information ( lemon law, buy back or salvage issues). In this respect we have found Car Fax to be very valuable tool indeed.

What we are suggesting however, is that no vehicle history report from any agency that provides this type of service should be used as the sole reason for buying/not buying a vehicle regardless of how appealing the advertising may seem; have the car inspected by a trustworthy facility.

O.C.C.E

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