Carfax - Good for Accidents??

I have been researching for months now to ensure a good quality 996 ends up in the garage and I am learning quite a few things... I am using carfax, Porsche North America, and of course the owners if possible to ascertain the vehicles history. I have found that calling Porsche and finding out the dealer it was serviced is only half the puzzle because many times owners bring their cars to independent shops for oil changes,etc... Also, this will not tell you if the car had been hit at all. However, the carfax reports have been interesting because some of the cars that I know have been hit show up in the carfax as "Vehicle Serviced, Suspension System Serviced". So far, its been consistent with 4-5 cars that I've known were hit and they all showed up on the carfax as "suspension serviced". I stay away now if I see those words...... Has anyone run into this as well??

AlexL, My experience with Carfax is: - Great resource to find generic info about a car's history - Great resource to crossreference info from another source - Clean Carfax report is no guarantee the car is completely clean - Damage on cars may not be entirely reported to an insurance company (or similar) and thus never makes it to a Carfax report - Carfax is just one piece of the puzzle, do your homework and you'll be very satisfied and happy with your purchase. My 2 pennies. Cheers.

AlexL. Carfax is totally useless. I purchased a 996 2 years based on a carfax report. and it was totally out of the loop. It showed totally clean, however in real life there was a title problem with the car. Save your money!

Carfax is completely worthless. My last car suffered an incident, was never reported or anything. Sold it asap. Not to mention, my current vehicle's last report in Carfax is from 2002. Keep in mind that it is in nobody's interest to report to them.

Carfax does not have all of the info. I bought an 1999 LS 400 last year that the dealer used the Carfax sales pitch to assure me the car was perfect. It was raining and I failed to pick up a wavy body panel. I figured it out when I washed the car in Oregon after we got home. Otherwise it was a good low mileage car. From now on when someone pitches me on the carfax report I will regard it as a red flag.

Carfax is good for # of owners, past locations of vehicle, if the car was totally, and to a certain extent mileage. It does zip for accidents, etc!

it is just as worthless telling you whether a vehicle has been totalled. often, mileage is misreported and carfax will issue an odometer fraud warning when that is not the case.....carfax's intentions are good, but it fails.

CarFax is worthless for accidents. I was the original owner of a car that had been in two accidents. I was shopping for a new (used) car and was using CarFax as a resource. Just out of curiousity I ran my car and it showed up perfectly clean...which I new was 100% false. This was a few years ago so things may have changed.

I agree with alpine about problems with carfax. I used to have a cobra convertible that I bought in IN and titled in IL. When I was getting my title I accidently checked a box that said somethin like mileage is not exact - maybe I marked it bc I knew my mileage was 24xxx but didnt know the xxx part. So because of that the carfax report showed a mileage fraud problem. When I was selling the car a year later I was a nightmare to get this problem corrected. It also made selling the car - which was a good as new - that much harder in an already messed up market. However, I think carfax is good for finding out where a car really came from, and if it is a one owner car - however even that can be misleading. I also had titled my Cobra 2 times - once in my dads company name and then in my own name. Made it look like there was an extra owner. Again made it hard to sell..... Good luck Jeff