OK!

So I bought my car with the carfax report giving it a clean title and it qualifing for the buyback garrentee.

I was at the dealership about to get my car serviced and the dealership guy that helped me noticed that I didnt have the factory placed stickers in the drivers door jam, that got him to probing about to discover, that my car has had the HIGH probability of being in an accident. He dicovered that the seams in the door jam and trunk were not from the factory and showed me the diffarance in the two sides. Also that the pinch weld in the drivers door was rusting where there had been work done on it, and also the paint differs ever so slightly from the hood, and the passanger side (not color texture) there is also evidance that the trunk has been taken off and repainted due to a run in the paint I found. I also found overspray in the drivers side door, only a touch, would have never noticed if it wernt for me detailing the jams today. You can see where it was taped and paint went around it.

I also have the JCW areokit on my car, is that done at the factory, if so does it show it on the window sticker? I talked to the prevoius owner and he has never had an accident in that car (assuming hes telling the truth) and I wondering if the dealership had something happen to it and added the areo kit, and put it on to help cover some evidance of some thing that has happened to it.

The point is something has been done to my car and someone is not telling me something...I'm really hoping that I get car fax to buy back my car assuming I can present them with enought evidance. Anyone know how that works?

ALso who ever did the work on my car did some great work... ONLY reason I know there was work done on it was the carelessness of not puting that door sticker back on.


Thanks again guys and gals

 

Not sure about the aero kit, but I think it is added after factory. Carfax is really pretty worthless. They only guarentee the car hasn't been "totaled" and put back on the road. (salvage title) This would be on the title, at least in Pennsylvania. They just run a title check through the state. If it's not on the title, it won't be on the carfax report.
Don't think that helps too much, but that's my experience.

 

That part of the Carfax has always puzzled me. How do they get info on accidents? There is no national database on wrecked cars (non-totalled), so who feeds them the info? No business that I know of is going to go to the trouble without getting paid to do so.
Oh, and you might want to read the fine print on the buy-back thing; you can bet that they left themselves some wiggle room on what qualifies.

 

The Carfax guarantee is explained on their site:

http://www.carfax.com/guarantee/hctermsanddef.cfm

It's really just for significant problems with the car - being totaled, lemon lawed, etc. I don't think your situation is covered.

I remember reading that damage/repairs have to be over a certain amount in order to get recorded in the title of the car and show up in Carfax. And I think even that varies by state.

Try not to get too bummed about it. If it was a good repair job you won't have any problems.

 

Everything you descrive can be found on most cars the way they come from the factory.

I have entire panels on the car that dont match. My hatch is different than the 1/4's.

Door sill pinch weld rust is very common on MINI's.

I have factory overspray allover the place, nothing new.

I have many runs in the factory paint. You have to remember, cars from the factory get NO wetsanding and buffing. How the clear lays it how it is.

The aero kit is a dealer installed option. Who knows, maybe the dealership got lazy and painted the aerokit on the car, and thats where the overspray is from.

What jamb sticker is missing? The barcode and build date sticker? If so, you better not try and get the car inspected, because they use the barcode to enter the cars information.

 

yea thats what I thought about the guarantee, i'm not to worried about it at all as the work is VERY well done. only thing that bugs me is if it happened and the dealership knew about it and didnt tell the buyer or the only owner adside from me is not telling me the truth, I dont see why he would lie though. The orginal owner got it in Florida, and didnt even drive it, just walked in, saw it on the floor, and told the sales man "I want that one, lets start the paper work" talk about an easy sale...

 

He probably wrecked it, then fixed it himself. I was in an accident with my mini a few years ago (Happend in Mexico, so you know they didnt have anything to cover it). I replaced the boot, rear bumper, front hood, and front bumper myself. I did this because I didnt want my insurence to go up and I didnt want my care branded salvaged. Maybe thats what happend to this one and the guy isnt honest.

 

I can tell you this from experience...don't put too much faith in the Carfax report. Also, the Carfax buyback guarantee is ONLY valid for a Salvaged title.
In other words if the car was in an accident and was NOT totaled then it is not covered by the buyback guarantee. It doesn't matter that the car was in an accident and the carfax report doesn't show it.

If you think you have a valid claim, you need to register your purchase with Carfax (you can do this at their website) and report the claim within a short time after the purchase (I think it is 90 days).

I purchased a used 2005 MCS w/12,000 miles for my wife from a non-mini dealership back in September. The Car looked great and the Carfax was clean..just one owner and then the dealership I was buying from. However, when I took it to my local Mini dealership to get it checked out, they indicated that the car had most definitely been in an accident. I had to go back to the original dealer and demand that they take the car back. The dealership I got it from had a 36 hour return policy so I was able to get my money back from them after a few heated discussions. The Mini SA practically voided the warranty on the 2005 MCS I purchased, which gave me some leverage as the dealership I bought it from advertised it as being under factory warranty until 2009.

Lesson learned...Have the car inspected and Don't rely solely on a clean carfax report!

If you do a quick google search on "Carfax Lawsuit" you will see that a lot of others have been fooled into thinking their cars were accident free (as their Carfax reports indicated) and they later found out this was not the truth. I believe there are a few proposed class action lawsuits against Carfax as well as active investigations by the dept of consumer affairs.

If you buy a used Mini from a non-mini dealership and you plan on having it serviced at a Mini dealeship for maintenance & warranty coverage, try to have the dealership check it out. Otherwise try to pay an inspector or certified mechanic to look at the car before you buy it.

BTW: For those of you that are interested, after I finished with this whole ordeal of returning the used 2005 MCS, I then proceeded to purchase a brand new 2006 MCS for my wife and paid $5K more just for the peace of mind of having a brand new car with a clean history. In my mind it was money well spent.

 

Yes, Car Fax is worthtless. And valid points were brought up about buying a MINI from a non-MINI dealer. I was lucky when I bought my 2003 Cooper. The guy who originally purchased it got orders to Korea right after buying it and decided to get rid of it. I got a brand new MINI for a great deal. Now, back in July when I traded it in for a 2005, I wasn't so lucky. The car had mushroomed shock towers. Instead of calling a dealer and seeing if this was covered under warranty, I just assumed it was. Now I'm stuck with the headache of fixing the car. Luckily, the car was clean though. No accidents.

Another point brought up about factory paint. Yes, my 2005 is full of blemishes and you can tell just by looking at them that it was done at the factory. So, in the end, if you decide to buy a MINI from a used car dealer, have it checked out.

 

Yes that one, any way I can get a new one made that anyone knows of or do I just get lucky enough to live with that clean sticker free look?

 

I always thought that that sticker was like the VIN On the dash, lik it was really bad to not have it.

I could be wrong tho.

Id imagine it would be hard to get as it has all the cars information on it.

 

Could you possibly go back to the dealer and ask for a replacement? Maybe a dumb idea, but what the heck.

 

BadMINI, what did ou mean about the mushroomed towers not being covered under warranty?

 

Before you panic about the sticker, check with a MINI dealer. Seems to me that the VIN number SHOULD take care of you, whether it is in barcode form or must be typed into the dealer's system, character by character.

Since the VIN is the car's permanent unique identifier. If typing it in (accurately) doesn't work, then their database is just a little bit screwy.

 

I was shopping for a car for my oldest son two years ago and ran CARFAX on a few cars, this allowed me to get the unlimited CARFAX report for a week. So....I ran it on my Expedition, it showed a potential problem due to an odo rollback, this was due to a typo at the dealership about two years prior when the tech had typed 16,000 instead of 61,000 on the mileage. CARFAX isn't a bad service, but their facts aren't always straight.

 

One other reason for the alleged repair is that it may have been damaged in transit and repaired at the terminal (VPC?) I understand this doesn't need to be revealed to the buyer. It is considered a factory repair.