The latest disaster

[MaryAnn]

My F150 has just over 13,000 miles on it. Just for funzies, I looked up the carfax report. Carfax says it has 208,000 on it because when I had the brake controller put in, the shop that did that reported it had 174,000 miles on it. So this is not funzies any more, and any attempt to trade the truck or sell it is going to show according to carfax that instead of being basically cherry new, it is worthless. Does anyone have experience with this? My first move is that I have printed the carfax report, am going Monday to the shop that mis-reported the mileage, and telling them to fix their error. Now. Past that, better business bureau. They consider themselves hot stuff because they are a AAA certified repair shop.

[Michael Bush]

My F150 has just over 13,000 miles on it. Just for funzies, I looked up the carfax report. Carfax says it has 208,000 on it because when I had the brake controller put in, the shop that did that reported it had 174,000 miles on it. So this is not funzies any more, and any attempt to trade the truck or sell it is going to show according to carfax that instead of being basically cherry new, it is worthless. Does anyone have experience with this? My first move is that I have printed the carfax report, am going Monday to the shop that mis-reported the mileage, and telling them to fix their error. Now. Past that, better business bureau. They consider themselves hot stuff because they are a AAA certified repair shop.

I would think enough money would be involved with this that a talk with an attorney might be worthwhile (assuming, as I pessimistically do, that the shop is going to stand by their error).

[FarahShazam]

You don't need an attorney. If it has 13k miles on it, have all of your oil change records stored and go see your dealer or fax in the report using this:

http://www.naaa.com/pages/resources/pdf ... n_Form.pdf" target="_blank

[tofu]

Errors like this happen all the time with CarFax. It's amazing what does and doesn't get reported. Shops aren't required to report. I'm sure they will be happy to submit a correction. They want to keep a paying customer happy. Whether or not CarFax can competently update the report is beyond your shops control. First you should contact CarFax. Second contact the shop and have them input a correction. Third an awful lot of people don't put much stock in CarFax reports because of the errors as well as the fact that some things in a CarFax can be misleading at best. For instance: a lot of cars that under Lemon Laws get bought back by the manufacturers are then resold at auction by the manufacturer. Some states require that the title reflect that the car was bought back by the manufacturer under a Lemon Law, but some states don't. It used to be if you saw a low mile car that was sold by manufacturer that these were factory field rep cars etc. and typically decent buys. Now many of these lemon law cars show up at auctions in states other than where they were sold and simply titled Manufacturer Car. Many Calif. and MN sold cars for instance magically will not show a history in their states as Lemon Cars and then end up in an auction in IL with a title that simply says Manufacturer Car. Lemon cars are to be avoided but a lot of people will end up with one as a dealer will buy at auction and put the relatively low mileage vehicle on the lot and the buyer thinks it's a great buy and gets a title with no mention it was bought back under the Lemon Law by the manufacturer and then simply resold. So that low mileage used bargain gets bought by unsuspecting buyer who looked at a clean CarFax ends up getting stuck with a second hand "Lemon".

So a lot of people look at a Carfax report with a healthy dose of skeptism. What you can do to help you in a sale should Carfax not correct the report is keep all your yearly emmission control tests (if your state requires like my state does). These will show the yearly odometer (always check when you have the test that they enter the right mileage - which shows up both on a screen when they do the test and on the printout they hand out. Keep all your service records for the car which typically include the mileage. I also assume the black box in your F150 records this mileage data as well. You should be able to buy reader to see this info the way your dealer does.

[Three Valves]

I'd still Google the VIN number to see if anything funny comes up....

[MaryAnn]

I like the idea of keeping the emissions reports. The business apparently responsible for the incorrect mileage is attempting to fix it by contacting Carfax. We'll see....the only reason I got all worked up was from reading a story of a woman who tried to trade her car and the place she was trading it wouldn't give her squat because of the Carfax report that said things that were just plain wrong. Of course, in my case, I'd just not trade it there (I don't trade anyway, why lose the $$?) but that is me. I just want things out there to be correct, which I realize is a losing battle a lot of the time. You can't even keep your medical records straight. I saw another story where carfax had a report that a car's frame was bent in a minor accident, same problem with selling / trading it, and he went to the extent of having some micro-measurement of his frame to prove it was not bent. Me, when the time comes, I sell at a reasonable price and wait for a reasonable buyer.

[MaryAnn]

Problem resolved. Carfax now has the correct mileage for when the work was done, which was 6200 miles. Whew. Interesting that the dealer is not reporting oil changes etc, and the $4000 worth of body work for a parking lot incident is not there either.

[Three Valves]

Will you be getting that fixed too??

[tofu]

and the $4000 worth of body work for a parking lot incident is not there either.

There is no obligation on the part of the repair shop to report stuff (and honestly it works against their paying customers interests in some cases) and that is the fallacy of carfax. It gives buyers a false sense of security and the proof in the pudding is how many dealers use carfaxes to sell used cars. Many flood cars / accident cars etc. / lemmon buyback cars etc. get missed by carfax.

No substitute for either knowing what to look for in person with a used car or having someone who does know look at it.
Glad you got your correction.

[Rick F]

Problem resolved. Carfax now has the correct mileage for when the work was done, which was 6200 miles. Whew. Interesting that the dealer is not reporting oil changes etc, and the $4000 worth of body work for a parking lot incident is not there either.

Glad to hear you got it fixed. Odd that the dealer doesn't share info, but maybe that's one reason why it's called "CarFax" and not "CarFacts".