[s-cars] Was Vin check Link, Now Carfax article

[JC]

yeah, the '98 C5 I bought from a criminal A-hole in NH had a semi-clean
Carfax but turned out to have been:
- a hidden lemon - aka dealer appears to have taken car back before angry
buyer made a lemon-law claim
- then in a very significant collision. probably a sandwich front/rear
crunch.
- then water damage - not full flood but I'm guessing left out a while
without glass post-accy

in the long run I still shaped it up and put 100k on it but pre-purchase the
Carfax just had one weird ownership entry and no major accident, no water,
no lemon records etc.

only thing that appeared and I didn't realize was the huge warning flag, was
a 'dealer fleet' record (which usually is supposed to mean 'demo car')
appearing strangely several months AFTER the initial sale to a private
owner. I called the dealer and they had some BS excuse about 'sometimes we
take cars back on trade and use them ourselves internally or as loaners for
a month or two...' in reality the first buyer had to have a ton of small to
major mech repairs done in first 6 months and then I believe threw a sh!tfit
and made them take it back on threat of lemon-lawing it.

in this case it wasn't Carfax hiding stuff but the dealer using tricks and
manipulating what got recorded to keep it off the books. after that I'm
pretty sure it was a dealer-related party (owners son/wife, that kind of
thing...) that had the major accy after the odd take-back, and they did the
repairs (which may have been a 'total' and salvage title to a normal owner
who didn't have a full body shop on staff) and again kept them off the
record.

and yes I was busy & distracted at the time and an idiot for not catching
the problems pre-purchase... it was a rush and said criminal A-hole came
half-recommended by somebody I trusted well.  lessons learned... including
don't blindly trust Carfax, and realize that dealers are wise to the dangers
of negative entries in the record books and will juice things to their own
benefit!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com
> [mailto:s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com] On Behalf Of Darin Nederhoff
> Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 9:24 AM
> To: hoog23 at aol.com
> Cc: s-car-list at audifans.com
> Subject: Re: [s-cars] Was Vin check Link, Now Carfax article
>
> I can vouch for that.  Recently saw a BMW 3 series
> convertible that had a clean CarFax but AutoCheck showed that
> it had frame damage when sold at the Manheim auction.  Sure
> enough, the car had been whacked in the rear.
>
> Darin Nederhoff
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 8, 2009, at 7:25 AM, hoog23 at aol.com wrote:
>
> > Did anyone read the article in the link below?? Pretty
> interesting how
> > Carfax does not disclose known?information that?(may be)?
> > disclosed when a car is auctioned off.? Says that Autocheck does.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: hoog23 at aol.com
> > To: s-car-list at audifans.com; dlandaeta at gmail.com
> > Sent: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 4:05 pm
> > Subject: Re: [s-cars] vin check? Edit: Working Link
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.cbsatlanta.com/news/19086976/detail.html
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: hoog23 at aol.com
> > To: s-car-list at audifans.com; dlandaeta at gmail.com
> > Sent: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 3:54 pm
> > Subject: Re: [s-cars] vin check? please...
> >
> >
> >
> > Free vin checks for 5 days.  Scroll down to end of article at link
> > below.
> > Autocheck worked for me.  No need to give them your 'real' email
> > address :)
> >
> >
> > www.cbsatlanta.com/news/19086976/detail.com
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Douglas Landaeta
> > To: s-car-list at audifans.com
> > Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 8:11 PM
> > Subject: [s-cars] vin check? please...
> >
> >
> > can anyone run a check for me? email me.
> >
> > --
> > http://www.hdradio.com
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