I've had cars with body damage repairs that I just paid out of pocket for (ahem...the Mrs. ); I know for a fact those repairs were never reported nor recorded, so then when I went to sell one of the cars I laughed when a buyer insisted on a Carfax report. I told him why he shouldn't believe everything in their reports and why my car was a perfect example of that.

 

Yep. I had this happen while car shopping last week. I was looking at a Subaru Legacy at a dealer and noted that the front bumper fitment was off. Salesman goes "well, we carfax them all to make sure they're clean". I told him "Yeah, but that doesn't show when Jimbob fixed it in his garage".

 

I quite literally feel your pain, having just recently unloaded my first G that I found was in an accident. I bought mine from a Nissan dealership, and they showed me a clean carfax. Two years later I went test driving at an actual Infiniti dealership, they ran my car to see what my trade-in value was and they found the accident with Auto Checker.

When I told them how the Nissan dealer screwed me, the Infiniti dealer said, and I quote, "If we had done something like that, we could have lost our dealership." They told me that I could have called Infiniti corporate and all hell would have broken loose. Maybe they were just blowing smoke, but they mentioned this fact MULTIPLE times while I was buying my new car. I would start with that. Call Infiniti and tell them exactly what was done by your dealer. Or, you can go to the dealer and threaten to call Infiniti and try and get a sweet deal on a new car.

 

Damn, that is some scandalous ****, good luck bro

 

Man wtf kinda crap is that???? thats so messed up. Was the car a cpo? Did they ever explain why the bumpers were not oem?

Kinda makes me run a auto check or carfax on mine again, since its been a year after I bought it. Replaced my 3rd compressor so kinda spooked.

 

We need to stop putting so much fate in carfax, do you know that unless there is a safety issue ie airbags, or frame damage, an accident would not show up on carfax? Simple replacing of panels like qtr panel, bumper etc does not show up in carfax.
Therefore because a clean report comes up, doesn't mean the vehicle hasn't been in an accident. The question you should ask yourself is: Did the dealer tell you the car was never in an accident? They are not obligated to volunteer that info if you don't ASK.

 

I'm pretty sure that's going to be a prohibited discussion on this forum.

 

I doubt seriously you'll have any legal recourse.

 

You're right. That's why it's not in his post anymore.

 

Very true, I bought a TL (cough, cough) last Fall and had my brother drive me to pick it up. He looked it over and said it's been painted before and the bumper color was off. He's worked on cars for over 20yrs so I trusted him so we drove it down the lot into different lighting and could see the color difference more noticeably. It also had a small issue within the tail light that he noticed. Carfax was clean but it had obviously (or not so obviously at first) had some work done to it, point being Carfax will not alwasy report things. I walked away from the deal, they game me my deposit back and how I have my G

 

That's why I always get the car inspected independently, or just buy new.

 

I hope you let us know what's going to happen when you bring it up to the dealers.

 

Well, you can buy new, but an accident that happened on route to the dealer may not be disclosed to the buyer as it gets fixed prior to pdi by the dealer.

 

After owning the car for 8 mo. now, I have realized it was in a wreck. I have found some red paint on one of the mufflers and tape over the license plate light. O.K., thats fine, because it wasn't on the carfax. Now it is on the carfax, that is a problem with me. I AM FUCT because I don't have the original carfax. THEY WOULD BE FUCT if I still had it. You can take a look at my albums if you want to see the bumpers, until I load new pics.

 

I saw the same thing when I was shopping for my G. Dealer had a clean carfax, but the car's file from the previous owner had records of a front end collision repair under USAA insurance. This killed the deal for me, didn't want a car with history.

Sorry to hear about this!