MyBlackCar

Has anyone come across Southeastern flood 944/968s' in their car purchase search?

Porsche-O-Phile

Most of 'em have had the titles and flood histories conveniently "purged". It's a real problem in the used-car world from what I'm told. . .

rickb20

I read somewhere (or heard on television) that Carfax was going to allow free searches for all VIN's that were involved in any weather claims from the SE US.

Maybe it would be worth running the VIN on Carfax.

alordofchaos

I posted that here in December, from Car and Track magazine (here for your convenience ):

"To help stop flood cars from becoming fraud cars, Carfax is making all its flood information available to consumers and dealers free of charge on a special page at www.carfax.com/flood.

At the Web site, potential buyers or interested parties can enter the VIN of a car and search Carfax’s records for any evidence of Katrina damage. Carfax has also tagged all vehicles whose last registration was in the ZIP Code of an area affected by the disaster and attached a special consumer advisory suggesting the car be checked by a mechanic because of the possibility that it was damaged in the disaster."

In addition, the National Insurance Crime Bureau has set up a special search engine at its Web site, www.nicb.org, where anyone can enter a VIN number and determine whether that number matches any of the hundreds of thousands of VINs collected from cars in the disaster zone."

streckfu's

How reliable is the Carfax information? I've seen numerous examples of cars that had been in accidents that failed to hit on Carfax.

Matt H

It is very accurate for cars that are run through the insurance company. They are also accurate for cars that are in states with inspections. Dealers turn over all their records to Polk as well.

However, if you have an accident that is unreported to the insurance company and local authorities there is no way they would know. For buying your average Camry it is a great way to go, for buying an exotic that is thousands below where it should be....well
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streckfu's

Each of the 4 cars I know about, were insurance claims and report was requested at least 6 months after teh claim was submitted (3 years for the longest).

Matt H

Were they major insurers? Was the car totaled?
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streckfu's

I'm pretty sure they were major companies like Progressive, Geico etc but don't remember the specific names (I did recognize them so they were not like esurance or anything). The claims were not totaled but for body damage like fenders, bumpers, struts in one case.

Matt H

I figured you were going to say that. The issue is that not every accident gets reported (I think it varies by state). If they were totaled that has to be reported or a title cannot be issued. Course, I am sure there is some fool way around that too. I dont ever look to carfax to tell me for sure if a car has been in an accident. What I want to know is: is the mileage at least logically possible and is the title clean. It is very accurate for both.
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alordofchaos

A lot depends on how your insurance company and your state (how often they update their own info and how often they update Polk and other data compilation companies).

Some accidents may not even get reported to Carfax, even if reported to the insurance company.

State DMVs are usually only notified of something like an accident if it required a titleing change, like a scrap title, flood brand, etc (and not all states use the same branding... for example, MI didn't require flood brands until a few years ago, so dealers would bring flood cars to MI, and the "flood" would come off the title).