Carfax- 100% reliable?
 

is Carfax 100%reliable? Would all warranty work show up on carfax? Making sure i'm not buying a lemon, Thanks

Some states do not require accidents be reported to carfax reports, my ex had an eclipse spyder that was twisted up pretty bad with a clean carfax

NO, it only reports what has been told to them.

NO, I have seen clean car fax printouts on cars that I know had been wrecked. Don't take a car fax that a dealer has already printed out, pull your own car fax for the most recent updates.

ETA: I'm not saying they are worthless, they do catch lots of stuff on them, but 100% reliable, no.

If the dealer that preformed the warranty work is not signed up with CarFax it will not be reported. You would be better off checking with a dealer's service department on the car you are interested in.

they only show what was reported to them, and a recent incident won't show, also I bought a durango a while back (for parts) that was crushed by a tree, the owner only had liability, never reported it and it never showed anything. I only look at them for the motor vehicle records, salvage, TMU, flood etc. accidents happen and don't neccesarily mean the car is a p.o.s. call a dealer for recall/service info and look at the car with someone knowledgable, in my opinion.

Mistakes happen too. I had a friend trade a car in that had been owned by them since new and never in an accident but when the dealer ran a car fax, for trade in purposes, it came up as being in a wreck. Come to find out the insurance company reported the wrong car. It was their sons truck that had actually been in the wreck not the car.

Thanks, I'll stop by a dealer and see if they look up the vin, wonder how carfax can honor the "money back guarantee" they offer is it's not 100% accurate?

Don't understand how they do it eitehr but as stated it's not that much better then the paper it's written on after seeing what my sone bought with a clean car fax report.

The smart thing to do is to take it to a reputable mechanic and have them check it out bumper to bumper.
Money well spent.. My son learned his lesson.

I looked at a used Honda Civic last year being offered by a private party. I knew as soon as I pulled up that the front end had been painted. Further inspection showed plently of evidence of a pretty decent front end hit. The owner produced the "clean" Carfax report that the used car dealer he bought it from the year before had produced for him. I'm 99.9% sure somebody facked the report. This guy honestly didn't know. So beware.