was carfax wrong....?

[Chris 93TA]

Someone was kind enough to check out my 93 TA for me on CarCheck, and found the following info.

A possible odometer rollback/rollover detected!
08/14/95 43,061
08/28/95 RAVENSWOOD, WV 13,134 MOTOR VEHICLE DEPT. ODOMETER READING FROM DMV
08/28/95 Possible Odometer Rollback/Rollover 13,134
05/06/97 50,525
(are you telling me, if this was a typo, in 2 yrs you would only drive it 7000 miles?)

07/28/98 KY STATE AGENCY COLLISION WITH ANOTHER VEHICLE

03/01/00 KY 96,144 MOTOR VEHICLE DEPT. TITLE (Lien Reported) (Title #: xxxxxxxx80)
TITLE (Lien Reported) (Title #: xxxxxxxx81) CORRECTED TITLE

05/10/00 ALEXANDRIA, KY 100,402 MOTOR VEHICLE DEPT. TITLE (Title #: xxxxxxxx81) DUPLICATE TITLE
I bought the car in begining of June 2000

I believe when I checked this car out in 2001 on Carfax, of this information showed up. ( i still have the printout somewhere).
The car lot i bought the car from did not notify me of any of these issues. Dont get me wrong, i Love the car...but, If I had known what i do today, I would have walked away from it, as it would have been WAY overpriced.

Can anyone tell me if there is anything I can do, or has it been too long to do anything about it.

The car was bought June 2000, (and being from England, over on vacation when we bought it, did not know about carfax/carcheck etc, until 2001, when i was told about carfax.

I have had to rebuild the motor, and now am having a few issues with paint peeling on the side i suspect was damaged

If anyone car run a Carfax to compare this information please let me know and i will send you my email address and VIN

(i already paid for a carfax on this car once, and dont believe I should pay another $25 to find out if it was wrong or not a 2nd time - sorry to anyone who works for carfax )

[Jeff_in_Atl]

I ran a Car Fax on my 85 Mustang and it showed nothing on it and know it had been in 2 accidents that it went in the shop for.

[TraceZ]

It looks like the odometer was simply mis read.

08/14/95 43,061
08/28/95 13,134
05/06/97 50,525


on 8/28 the mileage was most likely 43,134. the 4 was misread as a 1.

It looks like it was not driven much those years. As far as accidents... Most dont ever show up on Carfax. Only a few body shops report to them. Only if the car is a total loss, and titled as "salvage" before gettign repaired will carfax pick it up for sure.

[Chris 93TA]

My main issue, is why does it show on 1 report, but not the other.
Someone buys a new(ish) car and only drives it for 7000 miles in 2 years? i find possible, but hard to believe. as for a misread, that would be possible, but if you were turning back the odometer, the easiest way is to clock back the first digit, from 4 to a 1, making it look like thoe original read prior was misread.
The accident damage wasnt evident when i looked the car over at the lot, and they never mentioned it, even though i asked for it, but i can see it in black and white right there on the report.

And the corrected and duplicate titles should have shown up. Makes me more suspicius of car lots than I already was (I usually dont trust them at all.!!)
But this also makes me ask WHY did it not show this on CARFAX, as i presume they use similar, if not the same information to run the reports from.

[TraceZ]

Originally posted by Chris 93TA
My main issue, is why does it show on 1 report, but not the other.
Someone buys a new(ish) car and only drives it for 7000 miles in 2 years? i find possible, but hard to believe. as for a misread, that would be possible, but if you were turning back the odometer, the easiest way is to clock back the first digit, from 4 to a 1, making it look like thoe original read prior was misread.
The accident damage wasnt evident when i looked the car over at the lot, and they never mentioned it, even though i asked for it, but i can see it in black and white right there on the report.

And the corrected and duplicate titles should have shown up. Makes me more suspicius of car lots than I already was (I usually dont trust them at all.!!)
But this also makes me ask WHY did it not show this on CARFAX, as i presume they use similar, if not the same information to run the reports from.

It is not at all odd for someone to drive a car only 7,000 miles in a year, especially for cars like ours.

When rolling an odometer, you have to remove it from the cluster and manipulate the intire thing. That includes all the digits. You set it for whatever you want and put it back in. I know this because I've had to do it in the past while installing new clusters so the mileage would read properly.

I really think it is a mis read. No big deal. It is not all that uncommon. The carfax I ran on my car had a discrepency in it too, but it was an obvious single digit misread because I had other documents proving otherwise from the original owner.

[Joe 1320]

A Carfax report on my Fiero showed the same thing. There was one emissions inspection done and the wrong mileage was applied. Carfax will never be 100% accurate. They always rely on reporting from outside sources and mistakes are frequently made.

[Fastbird93]

Not uncommon at all. My black 93 has a 100% clean carfax report, but the car has obviously been in an accident. The front right has much smoother and clean paint, the nose isn't 100% aligned, the passenger fender isn't lined up all the way, overspray, rear hatch is a little crooked, and the biggie is the passenger airbag cover has some unusual dents/ridges at the top of the seam.

I may do the carcheck thing just for a kick to see what comes up.

[Black97]

I used to have a 81 Corvette. In 10 years a managed around 11000 miles.

I have my T/A now for almost a year and managed to make less than 500 miles.

So it's not unusual for people to make low miles.

[wolfdogs]

weve' run a ton of vehicles thru carFax here in the office to see if we wanted to subscribe.. the answer is NO. its a joke. we have yet to see an valid report on a crashed vehicle or stolen, even one returned on the lemon law. what a joke.

[Chris 93TA]

well, carfax showed no accident, but carcheck did.
When you get a carfax report, they make guarantees, but if they missed that, 3 years ago, and i have since found out, can i make a claim, i am guessing not.
So are car history reports really worth the paper you use to print them on?

I didnt want to start a flame thread, but i see this going down that road fast (and wrecking, although they may no record of it...ha ha)

[rstinnett]

Well, CARFAX has the buyback guarantee... which was meant exactly for these situations. If we miss a significant event, as outlined in the program, the car will be bought back from you at your full price.

We stand behind our reports and our name; we don't claim to catch everything -- noone can make that claim because if an accident doesn't get reported how are we supposed to know about it? -- but we do stand behind what data we have.

[rstinnett]

If you provide me with the VIN I will pass this along and we'll have a data investigator look into it for you.

[Chris 93TA]

rstinnett you have email.
there may be no need to investigate this issue, as the car was bought several months BEFORE the carfax report was run (so I think this would be outside the guarantee guidelines) but If you want to compare reports, let me know, and i will forward what i have to you

[rstinnett]

ACtually, it is issues like this where we want to see why we don't have the data. So this is a very good comparison we can do -- and I will make sure that we follow up with you as to why it did not show up when it should.

Rob