Carfax anyone?

[blueSS]

Does anyone here have access to carfax to run a VIN for me, through a dealer or work or something? I would like to check on the car I just bought mainly so I have service records, but also for the peace of mind it brings.
Thanks,
Adam.

[Rigor]

Originally Posted by blueSS

......but also for the peace of mind it brings.
Thanks,
Adam.

Not to bust your balls, Adam, but isn't checking the car's history AFTER you bought it a little late?

A local dealership for that vehicle can run the VIN and give you its service records. Also, a history of recalls and if they've been done or not. The dealership (assuming that's where you bought it) should have run the VIN prior to selling and updated the vehicle with any recalls that were applicable.

Also, for the record, CARFAX is not the save-all for your car. I have a friend that owns a dealership that buys cars at auction. He joined CARFAX and submitted 10 car VINs and 9 of them didn't pop up as having anything wrong with them. All 10 cars were flood cars, totalled by insurance.......FYI. No BS either....I was there when he called CARFAX to ask why this was..... They had no answer...........

[blueSS]

Yeah, I know, I should have done it before I bought it. I really wanted more along the lines of service records and prior ownership. I'm pretty confident that it wasn't wrecked or flooded as I had my mechanic do a fairly thorough inspection before buying it. He gave me the thumbs up, but he didn't have free access to carfax, and I really wasn't all that concerned, particularly for the reasons you just mentioned.

The reason that these things can happen without it showing up on Carfax is simply because Carfax takes their reports from public DMV reporting. So if a car was flooded and repaired, but never reported to DMV either by the owner, the shop or the insurance company for whatever reason, it's not going to show up on a Carfax report. Consumer reports has an article about flooded cars:

"But some flood-damaged vehicles will make their way back onto the used-car market, rebuilt and disguised as ordinary used cars with clean titles. State Farm Insurance recently settled a $40 million lawsuit after it was disclosed that the insurer had dumped almost 30,000 totaled cars at auction without retitling them as salvage vehicles. In addition, local mechanics who buy vehicles privately and resell them might not generate a paper trail indicating that a vehicle has been flooded."
I've been told in the past that Carfax isn't really all that good, and that plenty of wrecks and floods get through the cracks, so to speak. I ran the Carfax last night and found out the car was registered to a single owner in Dallas. Living in New Orleans, I really just wanted to make sure it wasn't a car from around here that might have gotten flooded. The presence of a front plate holder told me it wasn't going to be from Louisiana, but the type-A personality in me had to see it with my own eyes.