Is carfax really not a good guage about a car?

[tmckay615]

I was reading about Acura's, particularly about the MDX's and came across this blog at and was amazed to find out that you can't completely trust a carfax report. Is this true, and if so, what good is a carfax report?

[Hondacuraplanet]

I would think that between Carfax and a dealer Interactive Network report on a vehicle, there's just about nothing left to chance. I can furnish such a report on any Acura/Honda.

[raj]

carfax these days is useless. I know for a fact since my car had 2 accidents and they don't show up on the VIN lookup on carfax. Besides carfax shows routine maintenance on the VIN record. If you haven't bought the report, then carfax would display these as "X number of records" found for this car. Which makes you alarmed that there is something seriously wrong, and then when u buy the report and see those records are these stupid maintenance records.

[S2K2K4]

Carfax only does any good if the car's been taken somewhere that updates those records anyway. A standard pre-purchase inspection is more useful than any carfax report in my opinion.

[NobelTL]

I got the free oil changes for life on my s10 and it shows on the carfax every single one of them and a belt replacement. They're good for maintenance like stated but my trucks been wrecked four times and non of them are on it. And this last one would of totaled it out if I had reported it so the title would be marked.... only thing a carfax is good for

[BJack19]

The only things that will show up on a Carfax are accidents that are reported to the owners insurance company.

For instance, if an owner of a particular car knew or owned a body shop, chances are he is not going to report any accidents. So unless it was with another driver and the other driver reports it....Nothing will show up on the Carfax.... and as far as checking whether the regular maintenance was done, if the owner did all his oil changes himself, well thats not going to show up either....My advice would be to have an expert to do a good inspection of the car to tell you if any work has been done to it, or any work needs to be done with it. And for $30 I wouldn't waste my money on a Carfax, and I def wouldn't listen to what the dealer tells you about the car because they are obviously trying to get you to buy the car and don't want to tell you "oh it's been in a few accidents but it'll be fine" Because they know it would scare you away....

[Duckdog]

Since the OP on this thread is a spam wanker, I'm going ahead and closing down this thread.