"SteveLehto" (stevelehto)
08/11/2016 at 10:00 • Filed to: None
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"SteveLehto" (stevelehto)
08/11/2016 at 10:00 • Filed to: None | 9
| 5 |
How much do you trust Carfax? Maybe a better question is: How much should you trust Carfax? It’s the topic of this week’s Lehto’s Law .
Everyone knows you can pull a Carfax title history on a used car but not everyone knows the limitations of these reports (and the ones made by their competitors). Carfax misses stuff. All kinds of stuff.
And they sometimes include things that are false. I’ve seen it many times and I once even !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! where I pulled 5 Carfax reports on cars which had been bought back by car makers from my clients because the cars were “Lemons” in Michigan. Not a single report indicated the full nature of the car’s history.
Here is the audio:
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And the video:
And the pic at the top is me in front of Tucker #1044. I got to walk around it and talk with its owner and also John Tucker, Preston’s grandson. If you missed that, you can !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
Follow me on Twitter: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
Hear my podcast on iTunes: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
Steve Lehto has been practicing law for 24 years, almost exclusively in consumer protection and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! He wrote !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
This website may supply general information about the law but it is for informational purposes only. This does not create an attorney-client relationship and is not meant to constitute legal advice, so the good news is we’re not billing you by the hour for reading this. The bad news is that you shouldn’t act upon any of the information without consulting a qualified professional attorney who will, probably, bill you by the hour.
Justin Hughes
> SteveLehto
08/11/2016 at 10:57 |
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Truth! My BRZ got rear ended two years ago, and when a fellow Opponaut ran a Carfax on my VIN, it listed no accidents. It was a good repair. Friends of mine who work at body shops haven’t been able to tell it’s not original. But the accident still happened, and doesn’t show up on the report.
Snuze: Needs another Swede
> SteveLehto
08/11/2016 at 11:23 |
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So what I’m getting out of this is print a clean Car Fax when I buy a car... just in case...
Thanks again Steve, I love your Podcasts, always interesting and informative.
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SteveLehto
> Snuze: Needs another Swede
08/11/2016 at 11:27 |
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Precisely. I’m surprised more people don’t do that!
ateamfan42
> SteveLehto
08/19/2016 at 09:28 |
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Steve, great discussion on how CarFax (and others) are not the perfect car history authorities they want us to believe they are.
I remember viewing a CPO ad on one of the major car listing sites (Autotrader, Cars.com, etc.— don’t remember which), and the dealership listing the car had included the CarFax report in the ad. The report summary stated the car had no questionable history whatsoever. However, digging into the details the title history provided in that very report showed that the car had been previously stolen and recovered at some point prior to the current dealer taking custody. Seems to me a theft recovery is an item of concern in a vehicle history, yet someone who only looked at the report summary would have seen only green lights.
I believe CarFax and other tracking companies usually include a guarantee that the information they provide is accurate and correct and promise some sort of compensation if it is later shown they omitted some significant information. Have you ever heard of anyone actually making a sucessful claim for one of these guarantees? It sounds like one of the classic scenarios you describe where “litigation ensues”.
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SteveLehto
> ateamfan42
08/19/2016 at 12:49 |
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No. I have heard of people trying to make claims and being denied. Same with eBay’s guarantee. Meaningless.