How do you feel about CARFAX?

[Joe Marconi]

I was speaking to another fellow shop owner about the new Mitchell SE Management Program and how it automatically sends our customer information, repairs, mileage, etc directly to CARFAX. I am curious to see how shop owners feel about this and is everyone aware of this. In addition, if other shops use different management systems, are think linked directly to CARFAX too?

 

We had a very sticking situation when a customer was trading his car in and the mileage came up wrong on the CARFAX, we entered the wrong mileage by mistake. We got it corrected thru CARFAX, but the customer was not happy because it delayed making his deal. We had to prove to CARFAX that we did not kick back the mileage.

 

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[CARMandP]

I saw that was available when I signed up for the Mitchell SE last year. I declined it because I didn't want my customer records to be public knowledge. I just didn't feel right about.

[Joe Marconi]

Here's a scenario one shop owner told me: What if you discover a head gasket and frame rot on a customer's car and make all the notes about the car, and the person goes to the dealer to trade the car in, and the dealer picks up YOUR repair order with the notes on the head gasket?

 

You have done nothing wrong.....but.......You know the rest of this story....

[EhtRob]

We use RO Writer with carfax VIN integration. All we have to do is punch in a license plate number and the VIN comes up which then fills out all of the details about the vehicle. it's free but the trade-off is our service history is uploaded to Carfax which in turn ends up on those reports. We DID have one customer come in and say the we ruined his sale for his vehicle because we got the mileage wrong. Because we scan EVERY repair order the technician fills out including the mileage which was hand written by the tech I saw the mileage was the same as our invoice. Based on the way this guy was acting I truly think he rolled back the mileage on the car. BTW, the car had a "salvaged title" sticker on the door that was issued by the state. So I wasnt too worried that he was upset.

[Jeff]

Why should I share my info with carfax, who profits from it, just to get a vin decoder?

[EhtRob]

Your shop name ends up with the service history on their report. No Customer names are on the report, just service history and where it was done. It can work in your favor. The theory goes that if they buy the car then they will continue to take the car to your shop since you have serviced it before. The vin decoder is the single biggest time saver for us. We used to have to go to every car, write the vin, hope I can read my own writing and put it in the computer.

Now, punch in the plate, Vin, year, make, model, engine, all come up and fill themselves in the RO. May not be needed for some but if your a high volume shop doing repairs & service, tires and oil changes it's great. Now when you look up parts and labor using Epicor or whoever's catalog parts are correct (most of the time) and labor. SO much easier than the manual route.

[FROGFINDER]

Information that leaves your shop not controlled by you is being paid for by someone at no cash flow to you. Vehicle's will soon be recording and videotaping all repairs to "Increase safety and reduce incompetence during. We had a son of a customer can send a drone helicopter with camera into our shop to check out the progress.

[5 Star Auto Spa]

We also have the Car Fax integration in a program called Sage that we currently use but we never signed up to have the repair info sent to Car Fax. They have contacted us on 3 different occasions to sign up but we have just never gotten around to actually doing it.

[nmikmik]

The Carfax integration into our management system is a nice perk, but we pay for the management systems. Why should we pay for the second time with our customer's information?

Good bad of indifferent, this information should stay with the customer, not with Carfax and be available only through a court order imo. It shouldn't be our choice or responsibility to police who does what with their cars. If opting out from sending the info to Carfax is not an option, I'd say we should have a check-box on the repair order (maybe with place for initials next to it) to allow the customer to choose what to do with HIS information.

[Alex]

We had a son of a customer can send a drone helicopter with camera into our shop to check out the progress.

 

That's unreal. How do I get me one of those!!!

[mmotley]

I never even knew this was an option with Mitchell. However, the sales rep pretty much installed the software and left me to figure out how to use it...

[GeeZ]

After recent ads from Carfax, I searched and found this thread. My question is: How can a shop release this information to anyone

without authorization from the customer? I also found that auto dealers have software (ADP) that mines this information and sends

it to Carfax. Apparently, there were lawsuits from this action as the dealers had no knowledge of the release of information.

[Joe Marconi]

That is a very good question, and I really don't know.

[alfredauto]

they called me a while back and had me hook up the integration. The issue is I do all the work for them, plus pay Mitchell $4000 a year or whatever it is, and I still have to pay to see a carfax on a car I want to buy at auction or on trade in, so they take and don't give back.

[GeeZ]

they called me a while back and had me hook up the integration. The issue is I do all the work for them, plus pay Mitchell $4000 a year or whatever it is, and I still have to pay to see a carfax on a car I want to buy at auction or on trade in, so they take and don't give back.

It would be less expensive to just pay for each Carfax as you needed it. If you integrated the carfax, would you need to get customer authorization to release any info? What is the advantage for a customer to release any info? What does the shop get out of this arrangement? It seems to be that all the advantage is to Carfax to sell your info.