I bought a low mileage vehicle last year with 29000 miles. However, the title was branded Not Actual Mileage because the guy I bought the car from checked the wrong box when he got his title. I applied for a correction and the DMV reissued a clean title 2 weeks ago that says Actual Mileage. However, the Carfax still has the “Not Actual Mileage Title issued” next to owner 1 (previous owner). Is there a way to get this record removed? It has dinged the trade in value by more than 50%. People seem to swear by Carfax now. I have tried Carvana, Carfax, and a local dealer. Next to owner 2, the Carfax does says “A not Actual Mileage Title was issued in error and later corrected” but apparently this is not satisfactory to the dealers. I’m struggling to sell the car privately as well.
In my mind, the title is the indicator of the actual mileage on the vehicle.
Not some on-line website that doesn’t the get every bit of information on the vehicles they list.
How reliable is that?
Tester
I would suggest to keep the car for as many years as possible, then try to sell it private-party. Dealers and other resellers are not going to take a chance on this car, and will only offer you a pittance small enough so that they can make a profit selling the car at a wholesale auction.
However, once the car is old enough–such as 10 years or more–a person looking to buy private-party isn’t going to bother with Carfax. As long as the car looks good and runs well, that will be sufficient. I have bought many used cars in the $2000-3000 range, and never once paid to run a Carfax (or similar) report.
Have you attempted to contact Carfax to see if they can clean up the report? They might need additional information from you to get the error removed. You might be able to send in an affidavit or an odometer disclosure form.
It’s nearly impossible to contact Carfax. I filled out a request for correction online last week, but I have not heard back from them. I just got an automatic case number, and when I run a report, it just says “Research requested”. Surprisingly, it took Autocheck less than 24 hours to make the correction. I just sent them my new title. They even sent me a free report. Unfortunately, some dealers are too narrow minded and want a clean Carfax and Autocheck.
Hopefully Carfax will eventually contact you. I work in the used car business and unfortunately the actual value difference in a clean vs dirty Carfax is real, especially on a newer vehicle.
Seriously? In that case I wouldn’t use that dealer for anything. They of all people should know how wildly inaccurate and pretty much useless a Carfax is. According to Carfax my old 2002 Camry hasn’t been serviced since I bought it at 53k miles because either I did the work or an independent (non reporting) shop did. At 203k miles I gave the car to a friend, now it has 225k miles. And has been serviced on schedule and quickly repaired if necessary. But according to Carfax has gone 175k miles with out any service.
The dealers wouldn’t want a CarFax report unless their customers do. When I look at used cars, I definitely want to see it. In 2017 I thought about buying a 2 to 3 year old off lease CPO E350 from a local Benz dealer. Every one was purchased over 200 miles away and had an accident on the CarFax. Not one local, late model car. I stopped looking at their stock quickly.
Update. Carfax finally updated the history report and removed all records of the odometer brand. While Autocheck also removed the brand, there is still a record stating that a branded title was issued on a certain date and later corrected. Unlike Carfax, they said they cannot remove those records. Not sure if this would be an issue when I trade in. Thanks for the answers all.
Dealers have contracts with Carfax. it’s a quid pro quo relationship. Dealer’s can get information from Carfax if they give them their data (sales, service, accidents…etc). They are very narrow minded because they use Carfax as a selling tool to their uninformed customers. I helped my son and his girlfriend by a new car. Every dealer we visited - they all pushed the CarFax report like it was the only thing we should be looking at. Of the 4 cars we looked at with all clean CarFax reports - 1 I was very very skeptical of.
Did you just request the mileage correction online in Carfax? I met the same problem.
If I were buying a used car and the Car Fax report didn’t match-up exactly with the title the owner presented re the miles, beyond mentioning this to the shop I hired do a pre-purchase inspection, I’d just ignore the Car Fax report. I expect most buyers would do the same, not something to spend time worrying about.
Yeah you should just ignore the car fax for a number of reasons. In Minnesota the actual, if known, mileage bp needs to be reported on the title, so that’s what to go by.
Not unusual to see a mileage entry get fat fingered as the reverse of what it should have been, one of the collector car auctions had a Ferrari Mondial with a carfax discrepancy where the DMV where it was registered looked at the actual paperwork the came with the car and said it appeared to be in error and based on the services before and after the error the mileage displayed was correct.
A Carfax report is only as good as the info given… and sometimes not worth the paper it’s righten on…
The 2nd to last car I bought had a very clean Carfax report, and I popped the hood and showed the sales guy where the the vehicle had been wrecked and repaired…
In early 2020 my insurance company I’ve used for years mistakenly did that to my truck’s VIN number , typo on their database they send to the Calif DMV. So the DMV refused to allow me to re-register my truck during the Covid lockdown, saying it wasn’t insured. Wouldn’t have been a serious problem b/c I have another car, except the DMV also wouldn’t allow me to re-register my Corolla (long story, Covid issue). The result I had no vehicles to use at all and I had to walk to the grocery store just to buy food for 2 months, one time had to walk 3 miles carrying 20 pounds of potatoes, now that’s what I call Calif living! … lol …
Back In 1993 we got a postcard in the mail telling us we had an outstanding parking ticket on the Licence plate for the 1970 Datsun 510 Wagon that hadn’t been registered for 2yrs while we figured out what to do with it after it had been in an accident. Called the city and told them the ticket had to be a mistake but to no avail. When it went to collections Mom went to the state Atty General’s office. Called the collection agency a couple days later and they said we no longer owned any money.
I don’t know why anyone would want to move to California.
70 degree F today, clear and sunny.
Just to be fair . . . I don’t know why anyone would want to move to some other states 