CARFAX, Inc. Carfax failed to report accident Internet

I have a carfax that says clean title.  Car will not pass emissions so the NC DMV ran a 1 minute collision records check on my car and found a wreck in Florida in 2009. 

1 minute is all it took to find what Carfax apparently missed or neglected.  Car also has an Electronic Data recorder.  Why was that not checked.

Yes, Carfax, you can contact me to discuss.  I plan to take it to the dealer as well but I would love to hear your excuse about how this was overlooked.  I found a service on the internet in less than 5 minutes that checks DMV records and it came up.

I understand that if carfax had reported the damage, you might not have bought the car, or paid as much..but as stated, carfax does not always know if a car was damaged.

Since I buy/sell/restore cars as a sideline, I know how to check for previous collision damages and repairs. I always do a carfax regardless because it could let you know if the vehicle was ever totaled due to flood damaged, which can be covered up well, and also to verify actual mileage and previous owners, since they show you title records

If you do not know how to spot past collision damage or repairs yourself, you would want to have a pro do this for you BEFORE you commit to purchasing.

Think about it...I can drive a car into a wall at 50...not report it..have it fixed or fix it myself, and sell the car to anyone as perfect condition. Now unless carfax has some kind of hidden cameras all over the USA, how could they possibly know if I or anyone had done this? They only know what is reported..unfortunately not every time a vehicle suffers damage, is it reported.

The report here should be against the dealership if they were aware of the damages and tried to hide it from you. And generally, they do a complete multi-point checkout top to bottom before the take any vehicles in, so it is safe to assume they were well aware of the previous damages. They may even have done the repairs themselves.

 You should take it up with the dealership you bought it from.

 They checked this vehicle out before selling it.If you found these problems surely they did too.

 Sounds like your dealership may have known & not told you.

 Check with an attorney.Find out the laws in Fl. about selling such a vehicle.

   Carfax is not a substitute for having a prospective purchase checked out by a trusted mechanic.   This usually costs less than $100 and will quickly uncover major issues like past accidents.  I use Carfax as an added source of info when I'm buying, but understand the limitations of the data sources they use.

   On their own website they state :

"Before you buy a used car, we recommend that you get a CARFAX Report, take a test drive, and have the vehicle inspected by a qualified mechanic. "

When the local police departments have a report of this accident, there was a failure of a previous owner or their substandard insurance company to report this properly which now causes our vehicle to only be worth 50% of what it should be. If Carfax had reported this properly we would have never purchased this vehicle.

 Carfax only reports what is reported to them.

 If the car was in an accident & repaired but not reported to the insurance co. it was properly not reported to Carfax.They can only report what they know.