Opinion
April 24, 2008
Paul Wenske’s article “Risk of buying a rebuilt wreck won’t go away” (April 16) showed how the fraudulent sale of rebuilt wrecked and flooded cars continues to be a major problem.
There are additional important things that used car buyers and your readers should know: Carfax, which researches a vehicle’s history for a fee, does not protect you.
Attorney Bernard Brown, who is quoted in the story, and I specialize in auto fraud. We estimate that close to nine times out of 10 a Carfax report will not reveal previous wreck or flood damage to a car at the time the car is offered for sale by a dealer.
Used car buyers relying on such “clean” Carfax reports shown by dealers are more likely to be cheated buying used cars. Dishonest dealers will actually use “clean” Carfax reports to make consumers believe that the cars have not been wrecked, though dealers frequently detect previous damage.
Carfax does not get damage claims information from insurance companies, or from the large rental and lease car fleets. The information Carfax gets from government sources comes months or even years after the accidents. The government and other sources Carfax uses are very patchy, missing huge numbers of cars. Dishonest dealers “pre-check” wrecked cars to make sure the damage doesn’t show up in Carfax.
In Missouri, for example, the law was recently changed so that fewer wrecked cars have to be reported to the state as “salvage,” so fewer wrecked cars are reported to Carfax.
The solution to this problem is to make all of this damage data from insurance companies and the large rental and lease fleets available to the public by prompt, electronic means such as on a Web site.
What the public needs is a national database that really works.
A federal law requires building such a publicly-accessible national electronic database.
But the U.S. Department of Justice has never implemented key sections of that law. Consumer groups — and, to their credit, some industry groups, such as the National Auto Dealers Association — have been working separately to pressure the Justice Department to implement this law. This is the crucial step toward the solution.
If you’re buying a car, have it inspected before purchase by a qualified body technician. Do not rely on Carfax (or Autocheck or similar databases) to protect you.
Write letters to your senators and representatives urging that a national motor vehicle title information system be built and made electronically accessible. It should include wreck and flood damage data from all major sources.
This solution is very easy, very cheap and very important for public safety and consumer protection.
Dale Irwin is an attorney who specializes in auto fraud. He lives in Kansas City.
http://www.kansascity.com/273/story/590744.html