I think the Carfax is both a windfall for insurance companies and it brands your car a loser. If you have an accident and the damage is $2,000 and you have a $1,000 deductible you would be crazy to go to through an insurance company to get it fixed. Even a new bumper, once it is on the Carfax, will take 15 to 20 percent off the value of your car when you go to sell it (about four thousand on a car worth $20,000). So rather than go through insurance don't you think people are going to eat the $1,000, get a collision guy who won't report it, and then trade it in? The insurance company benefits from these decisions to keep fender benders off the Carfax.
Carfax is good for buyers and bad for sellers. The moral of this story is: If you intend on selling your car within 3 or 4 years, lease it.
3 comments:
The repair shops nor the insurance companies report to carfax, carfax works off of the police reports and other sources of public information. If you get into a wreck, by the time you get to the repair shop, the police report into is already on it's way to carfax.
Well, this certainly sucks. My vehicle has been hit numerous times, while I was parked in a store (talk about bad luck). I brought it directly to the vehicle repair shop my insurance carrier told me to (who does a great job). If I would have known this, I would have taken the check for the repairs and the vehicle to somewhere in Tamiami to get fixed!
The police report wouldn't say it has structural damage so you know where carfax is getting that from -- the bodyshops through the insurance claim. The car dealers report everything...the oil changes etc. The body shops the same when they get insurance checks.
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