Hey guys, I've been wondering this ....I tried doing a search but everything that shows up under carfax is people offering / requesting carfax checks.
Basically who reports accidents, flood damage, etc... to carfax? is it a dealer bodyshop that is required to do so by law? what if someone takes their car to a mom and pop body shoop do they also have to report repars to carfax? I honestly don't see a lot of small body shop stores doing that..so then if that's the case then a car with a clean carfax record hwould probably only mean the owner never took the car big body shop who reported it and might have instead taken it to a small shop or done the repair himself?.....and still the record looks clean? or maybe Im just way off.....

It's mostly based on insurance records, vehicle registration records, etc.

Yes, a repaired car could easily show up clean on Carfax if the repairs were done "off the record" so to speak, whether by mistake or by not being reported to any of the databases used by Carfax during routine searches.

If there was no insurance claim, then chances are carfax won't show it.

Whenever you change the title or get it inspected, it'll show up, basically stuff done by or turned in to a state agency.

I'm not sure if accident reports from PD's show up, but if there was an insurance claim you can almost bet it's on there.

My car's got paint work that was so good it was only picked up by a paint meter, but it didn't show anything in a carfax report.

Ahh yeah insurance records make sense....figures, since people will go tru their insurances for any major work. Thanx!

yeah, carfax is far from the end all know all solution. if its not reported...then nothing comes up. while its really the best thing we have so far, there are still many ways to get around those records

My car shows up clean but the front bumper doesn't match the rest of the car at all.