About 6 months ago, my buddy bought a CPO 2000 BMW 323i with about 37 or 38K on the ticker. He paid top dollar for it..which to this day i have no idea why.

Anyway, due to some life changes, he is trading it in for a new SUV. I went to a few dealerships with him and they all asked the dreaded question...."was this car in an accident?" He replied no, because thats what the salesman at BMW told him. Unfortunatley it was not true.
The appraiser whips out a paint meter and shows the range of thickness throughout the car, but on the front fender, it is much thicker. As a result, my buddy takes a $1700 hit less than if the car had no paint work. Funny thing is that this car is as clean as they come. Even the appraisers said that the paint work is immaculate. The thing that gave it away was the seam between the fender and the hood and door.

Anyway, the reason for my post is:
1--Just because you are buying a CPO'high-end' car, doesnt mean it wasnt in any accidents
2--I dont think he has any legal recourse with the dealership, but has anyone else been in a similar situation, and have some advice to offer?

Thanks.

 

They can still be CPO as long as the repairs returned them to as good as new look and operation, sucks, but it happens, gotta check car faxes and get 3rd party inspections if you are concerened about wrecks

 

car fax wont tell you jack sometimes, you have to have a good eye.

 

My old 325i was in a $12K accident. Recently I checked the VIN on carfax and it shows accident free. It has had at least one owner since I got rid of it back in 1999.

 

Carfax won't know if someone paid for repairs themselves, will it?

 

Bit ...no!! But if an accident was reported to the insurance company it will show up on some reports.

 

Sure but many people won't report accidents to insurance if the damage isn't major, so they don't get whacked in insurance premiums forever after. So CarFax isn't so great unless the car had SERIOUS damage in which case the repair is probably pretty easy to detect.

 

trust me, cars with serious damage do not show up on carfax either. only one true way to tell if the car was wrecked, is to check the car out with a body guy.

 

So it sounds like Carfax is basically useless.

 

For the most part, yes.

I total'ed my old SC 400 and to this day it still does not register on Carfax even though it was notified to the insurance company and DMV.

Just another reason to waste money, IMO.. because it provides no CONCRETE information.

-Anthony

 

Agreed... you can not trust carfax... but don't they have something that states if you pull a carfax and you do find out that it was wrecked and not recorded you can get up to 5k with in the first 1 to 3 yrs or something ?? I can't rem the details...

Shawn

 

I found the following on their site...

$5,000 CARFAX Certified History: Run a CARFAX Report. If the vehicle has a clean title history it will then be covered automatically by CARFAX’s $5,000 Certified History guarantee…FREE from CARFAX. You have protection for 3 years against unreported title defects. Should you discover a problem title, which was not included in the CARFAX Report, CARFAX will then pay you 10 percent of the vehicle’s wholesale value up to $5,000.

Not sure if this will help out or not...
Shawn

 

Thanks for passing that along, Shawn. I will forward to my friend.

 

LexRoc , did your friend get a carfax on this car at any time before/during buying it ?? I would say if he did then that above guarantee I posted should apply I would think... I am sure you would have to look into this more and find out who / where this accident was fixed, also to find out if even it was an accident... It could have been something else like a cart or something was pushed into it and in order to make it look good it had to have the full finder re-painted... I am just throwing out ideas... But I am sure if you could find who did the work and if they can provide you with docs stating as such and he had a carfax before the purchase of the car then I would say he’s got something...

Keep us updated...
Shawn

 

That guarantee covers issues with the title - i.e. if the car was a salvaged title or not. It says nothing about accidents (unless of course the car was totalled).

My repairs were all paid by the insurance co. Still, I would probably run a Carfax on a car that I was looking to purchase - just one extra check.