CarFax Faces Questions After Claiming A $9,672 Catalytic Converter Theft Isn’t Damage
CarFax reports are less than perfect and the company just decided to make them even worse
https://www.carscoops.com/author/mikecarscoops-com/
by Michael Gauthier
A Canadian was shocked to discover a damage claim on a CarFax report.
His truck’s catalytic converter was apparently stolen before he bought it.
It cost $9,672 to fix and lowered his truck’s resale value, but he won out.
Catalytic converters are popular with thieves as they’re relatively easy to remove and contain expensive materials such as platinum, palladium, and rhodium. The latter costs around $7,925 per ounce, which is almost twice as much as gold, so it’s easy to see the temptation.
More: Police Only Solve Around 1% Of Catalytic Converter Thefts In The UK
While these thefts typically impact unsuspecting owners at night, one Canadian man recently got a nasty surprise when he went to trade-in his 2023 Ram pickup. Even though he bought the truck brand new, there was a damage claim on the vehicle.
When a Trade-In Turns Sour
This was revealed by a CarFax report, which said there was $13,634 CAD ($9,672) in damage due to an apparent catalytic convertor theft. Because of that mark, the truck’s trade-in value appears to have dropped by $5,000 to $8,000 CAD ($3,547 to $5,675), a loss that left the owner understandably frustrated.
That’s a significant amount of money and CTV News reports the man contacted the dealership where he bought the truck, and they claimed to be unaware of the incident as well.
The news station eventually reached out to CarFax, because the owner of the truck felt this wasn’t an accident and shouldn’t impact the vehicle’s resale value.
What Counts as Damage?
Surprisingly, CarFax agreed as a spokesperson told the station “Given that there was no structural or accident-related damage and that the stolen part was replaced with an OEM part, it should not be considered an Accident/Damage record on our Vehicle History Report.”
They went on to say it was recategorized as a service repair, which sounds kind of misleading.
In particular, imagine if you end up buying this truck, which now doesn’t list any damage or accidents. However, you eventually find out someone apparently sawed off the catalytic converter and did $13,634 CAD ($9,672) of damage in the process.
Damage is damage, and I’d certainly want to know if I was buying that truck. So while the owner comes out as the victor, it appears CarFax undermined themselves and their own vehicle history reports.
We reached out to CarFax and they told us, “Theft of part of a vehicle is generally considered a stolen event rather than damage, though we report what is reported to us.” They added “theft of a catalytic converter is still disclosed in the report,” although in this case it was apparently switched to be listed as a service issue.
Sources: CTV News, Carfax
