Carfax vs Autocheck

[Dan DiBiase]

________________________________
From: P Cole <pcolegrps at comcast.net>
To: Dan DiBiase <d_dibiase at yahoo.com>
Sent: Wed, June 9, 2010 11:02:00 PM
Subject: Re: Carfax vs Autocheck

On Wed, 9 Jun 2010 06:38:30 -0700 (PDT), Dan DiBiase wrote:

>Anyone know anything about the differences between these 2? I know that Carfax seems to be the industry standard, 
>but they have apparently gotten rid of their 'unlimited report' service recently, which stinks. I'm getting ready to buy a
>car for my son, and don't want to pay $45 for every 5 reports I run! Autocheck has unlimited reports for $44.95 for 30
>days (like Carfax used to). I have to believe that both are pulling from the same databases (like the various on-line map
>applications). Anyone have any personal experience with Autocheck?

I know one difference is that autocheck is used by many, many insurance companies because they [autocheck] seem to have
more data from auction and insurance "totals" than carfax.
When I ran my son's CQ it was fairly "clean" on carfax but after it had been read-ended the offenders insurance was able to pull a report showing 
a previous accident ( left front fender creased/repaired exceeding the "worth" of the car resulting in a total out)  that DID NOT appear 
on the carfax report. 

------------------------------------------------
I ended up just doing the unlimited Autocheck reports for 30 days, as I had a couple of VIN's I wanted to run
last night. Did some Googling and it seems that you're right, that AC has some additional information but hasn't
marketed itself quite a much as CF has. The format in AC is a heck of a lot easier to read, too.

And for sure, these are 'garbage-in, garbage-out' systems, guarantees/buy-backs regardless.... My 1995 Jetta
was involved in a collision (I t-boned a guy who ran a stop-sign) and had $13k of damage - mostly sheetmetal and
airbags - wasn't totaled by the ins. company and never showed up on Carfax. So, like everything else when you
buy a used car, more info is better but there are no silver bullets.

I will have to run the VIN of my old Jetta on Autocheck, see what shows up.....

Dan D
'04 A4 1.8Tq MT-6
Central NJ USA