It may not show up at all.
fighting carfax on it is going to be tough. Here are their terms for the buyback guarantee:
https://www.carfax.com/manifest/bbg/termsConditions.cfx
That’s why you should always lease cars???
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I do not believe in carfax its not always 100% accurate.
Ok, so I had a weird experience which led to me finding out some stuff about Carfax. I guess the first sign that something seemed fishy with their records was when I bought a 2000 S10 that had clean records but had obviously been in a wreck, but I digress.
A couple years ago my wife was driving our brand new CR-V and was in an accident. The other driver was found 100% at fault and all repairs to our vehicle were covered. The damage was significant and cost upward of $10k. Even though I paid nothing out of pocket, the thought crossed my mind that my vehicle suffered significant loss of resale value since the accident would be on the Carfax report. This led to discovery of something called “diminished value” claims. Most states allow for folks to claim diminished value in these situations to cover the loss of value beyond structural damage. I paid a guy $200 to write up a fancy report documenting how much less my vehicle was worth post-collision and started going after the other driver’s insurance company. It took a good 7 months before I ended up settling for $2500 to cover about half of what I started off asking for. The reason I had to settle for so much less was that nothing ever showed up on the Carfax report. This significantly damaged my negotiating power, but I guess it’s good that it’ll have a clean record.
Having a clean report was very strange to me since the accident was pretty severe. There was no frame damage, but the entire front end needed replaced. Anyway, I did quite a bit of digging to figure out why a bad accident that had been documented in a police report as well as insurance records, and body shop records didn’t show up in the Carfax report. It turns out that Carfax mostly relies upon law enforcement departments to provide records of accidents. They must pay departments a fee for access to partial reports. I doubt they have deals with all local departments and some smaller cities are probably pretty poor at sharing records even if they do have a deal in place. It doesn’t sound like they get much info from other sources. My body shop said that even if they did share info it’d just show up as being a service appointment. I don’t think insurance companies share info and the DMV doesn’t even keep track of those records in my state. All they did was record that my wife was in an accident and didn’t tie it to any particular vehicle. To sum it up, I think it’s good due diligence to get a Carfax report. However, that data should be taken with a grain of salt and you’d be wise to have a body shop look over any used car that you’re thinking of buying. Those guys are experts at picking up signs of repairs that were made. I’d rely more upon them than a mechanic for newer vehicles.
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I didn’t pay anyone and got $1,250, but it must be dependant on the amount of damage and car’s value. My damage was under $4k, I think.
I’d say the biggest factor is the value of your vehicle at the time of the collision. Mine was 1 year old and only had about 12k miles on it. After that, the amount of damage is probably the next biggest factor. Having some help from people who’ve been in the industry, like the guy who wrote my report, definitely helps.
Mine was a $30k sticker 6 months with provably less than 5k miles. I recall (but not completely sure) them saying that diminished was calculated as 5% of value.
When I was buying a used car last year I used Carfax reports to screen things out. If Carfax showed an accident I didn’t bother to look further at that vehicle. If the Carfax was clean I treated that as no evidence of anything and did my own checking when I saw the car. Cargurus lets you screen based on reported accidents which was helpful. That and not looking at anything with a salvage title removed about 10% of my options.
This was a high volume vehicle so I had a ton of them to chose from and I was looking for ways to quickly narrow down my options rather than trying to find an ultra-rare color or configuration.
Carfax is screwing me too. I bought a car brand new and now, 3 years latter, I’m trying to sell the car. The car fax report states it was in an accident and gave my a range of when the car was in an accident. 9 month of part of the range, the car was not even built… the other 3 months I had the car and did not have and accident . I filed a complaint with Carfax, and they told me to call the LAPD. LAPD told me to file a accident request form and I’ll take five weeks to get it . If there was a report at all. Now I can’t sell my car for a fare price.
Erick
My first lease I got it in Delaware. I register the car there and then moved to florida (job related).
When it was time to return my lease, carfax showed IT as odometer tampering. Their report showed my 10k dealer service in FL happened before the registration of a new vehicle with just a few miles.
Since it was a lease, I didn’t get screwed.
Just out of curiosity I’d run an Autocheck and see what it says. Often times Carfax and Autocheck don’t match.
If it happened in transit, the dealer might not have known. I saw a vw eurovan camper bought back by vw because a couple years after the sale, the owner found out there was a previous repair that wasn’t disclosed(damaged at the port and repaired). Vw had to buy it back and give them all their money back
I will be contacting my attorney so if anybody wants to send me their info to carfax.complaint@gmail.com so we can file a law suite please do so with all info. i have owned my Porsche 911 since 2016. Carfax is reporting a “frame damage”. NO ACCIDENTS. i spoke with my insurance who has no knowledge of any damage, i spoke with police in California who has no info on any damage finally i went to Porsche in Newport Beach California to inspect my vehicle. Service and sale manager looked at my car, top and bottom on a lift in service department and they noted NO DAMAGE. Carfax is ignoring my emails since February of 2019. To trade in my vehicle i would be losing roughly $30,000 and i will be seeking damages worth of $30,000. - already filed a complaint in BBB. if anybody has any open case, suggestions or suite against carfax please let me know!!! This has to END!
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Carfaz is known for misreporting events and doing nothing to rectify their records. Best of luck.
With that being said, what’s the best offer you’ve gotten on your 911? I’ll beat it by 5k ;P.
Yes, I agree with you.
A couple months ago I returned my leased bmw.
The car has been in 2 accidents:
1st accident was a front end collision with over 10k worth of damages (reported and fixed through Mercury insurance)
2nd accident was rear end collision with about 3k worth of damages (reported and fixed through AAA)
I decided to search the vin of the car as I was curious to see what it would sell for with 2 accidents on file. I end up finding it at a bmw dealership being sold as CPO. I click the carfax link and it shows zero accidents 
. I was shocked and more concerned for who ever buys that car thinking it’s clean with no accidents. I know carfax doesn’t show everything, but I figured 2 accidents being reported through insurance would show up.
On top of this, I maintained the car at a different dealership than the one I leased it from (I moved cities). From my past experiences the dealership name/info always comes up on carfax showing where the car went. On this carfax, it only shows that I maintained it at the original dealer the car was leased from (even though it never went to that dealer after it was leased). I did return the car to the same dealer I leased it from.
I find this pretty weird and it’s almost like the dealership picked what they wanted to show on the carfax. It seems like a clean car that stayed local and has never been in an accident. It definitely makes me not trust carfax, not that you fully should anyways. Random rant but any thoughts on how accidents like that don’t get reported to Carfax?
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Seems odd, does the vin match?