When I recently tried to sell my vehicle, the dealership told me the Carfax [vehicle history] report showed “a police-reported accident” from last year with moderate damage. It’s a 2015 Volkswagen Jetta I bought new and it’s never been in a collision. Carfax hasn’t responded to a correction request I submitted to them two weeks ago. I tried calling my insurance company, a police collision centre and Service Ontario to get more information, but I’ve had no luck. Is there anything else I can do to remove this collision that didn’t happen? The dealer says I could get up to $2,000 more for the car if the collision gets taken off the report. – Julien, Ontario
Chances are that a mistake on a vehicle history report won’t be fixed fast enough to save a [pending] sale, an industry expert said.
“A professional seller then has an uphill climb to explain to the buyer that the information is incorrect,” George Iny, president of the Automobile Protection Association, a national pro-consumer advocacy group with offices in Toronto and Montreal, said in an e-mail. “A private buyer would probably pass on such a vehicle or ask for a big discount from a private seller.”
A vehicle history report can show information including collisions, maintenance history, open recalls and whether there is a lien on the vehicle. While there are a few companies that offer them, most dealers use Carfax. So how does Carfax, which is owned by a U.S. company, get information for its $69.95 full report?
Carfax Canada didn’t have anyone immediately available for an interview and referred us to its website. It states that Carfax has access “to billions of data records from thousands of trusted sources across North America, including Canadian and U.S. motor vehicle agencies, insurance agencies, collision repair facilities, auto auctions, police departments and more.”
And if that information is wrong? You can request a review through the company’s website.
“Carfax … is perceived by auto dealers as being generally unresponsive when there are errors in the reports,” Iny said. “[Errors] can happen, and it’s reasonably foreseeable that there will be some errors in a compilation of databases from a vast range of sources.”
Speedy fix?
With the reader’s permission, we shared his name with Carfax Canada. Within hours, he got a response. Kristy Pinder, a Carfax spokeswoman, said the company expedited the complaint after we contacted it.
Carfax traced the error to a 2023 collision report filed by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and told the reader to call the rural detachment. It turns out that the wrong licence plate was put into the original collision report. The OPP told the reader that it could take at least 10 days to change the collision report and Carfax said it could then take another 10 days for it to correct the error.
We shared Carfax’s response to the reader with Iny, who called it “incomplete” because “it required a follow-up by the vehicle owner.”
So how long does it normally take for Carfax to investigate and correct a mistake?
Carfax didn’t directly answer our questions about how many complaints it receives or how long it typically takes for a complaint to be acknowledged and for an investigation to be started.
Its website states that it “cannot guarantee the length of time an investigation will take to be completed.”
Iny said he’s heard dealers using Carfax complain that fixing errors can be slow.
”You’re looking at a couple of weeks for an acknowledgment, if you get one,” Iny said. “And then weeks longer for the correction, if you are indeed informed that one was made.”
Shari Prymak, a senior consultant with Car Help Canada, a Toronto-based non-profit that helps drivers find cars and negotiate purchase agreements, said he hasn’t had complaints about Carfax reports showing collisions that did not happen.
“I don’t believe errors such as this are common,” Prymak said in an e-mail. “We do, however, receive complaints when it is the other way around … [where there is] a prior accident with a vehicle which does not show up on the Carfax report.”
Typically, those kinds of errors are because an insurance company may not have shared the information with Carfax, he said.
“While Carfax reports don’t always tell the full story of a vehicle’s past history, this is more a result of [insurance companies] not reporting … than with Carfax itself,” Prymak said. “In general, a Carfax report is an extremely valuable and rich source of information that every used vehicle buyer should insist on seeing. But buyers should go one step further and get a prepurchase inspection done on a used vehicle before purchasing.”
An inspection will identify repair issues, but may also uncover previous collisions that may not be on the report, Prymak said.
Deal breaker?
A Carfax report showing a collision “absolutely” hurts the resale and trade-in value of a vehicle, Prymak said.
“Buyers are often wary of purchasing a vehicle with prior accidents out of fear that the vehicle could have issues down the road.”
While a minor collision under $3,000 shouldn’t have much of an impact on the sale price, more serious past collisions could take “thousands” off the value of the car, Prymak said.
But John Wallischek, the sales manager at Autolinks, a dealership in Vaughan, Ont., said that he hasn’t “lost any sales” because of something shown on a Carfax report.
“Everyone thinks it’s the Bible. It’s not,” Wallischek said in an e-mail. ”It’s the way I read [the reports] and the way I present them to clients. It’s a snapshot with only so much information.”
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