Buying a used car can be a bit of a minefield. Most sellers are perfectly genuine, but every buyer has heard stories about cars that turned out to have hidden problems. Sometimes it’s something relatively minor. Other times it’s outstanding finance, accident damage or a mileage issue that only comes to light after the deal has been done.
The frustrating thing is that you can do everything you think you’re supposed to do. You can walk around the car, check the tyres, look for dents and scratches, take it for a drive and ask plenty of questions. The car can even feel absolutely spot on, but what about a car history check.
Because none of that tells you much about its past.
A vehicle’s history isn’t written on the bodywork. You can’t see from the driver’s seat whether an insurance company once declared it a write-off or whether money is still owed on it. Those are the sorts of things that tend to stay hidden unless you actively go looking for them.
Looking Beyond the Car on the Drive
A car checker brings together information from a range of databases and records, including those held by the DVLA, to help build a picture of what’s happened throughout the vehicle’s life.
Some buyers think of it as an extra. I’ve always looked at it as part of the buying process.
You wouldn’t buy a house without checking the paperwork. A used car might not cost as much, but it’s still a significant amount of money for most people. Spending a few pounds on a car history check to find out whether there are any warning signs seems like common sense.
The good thing is that it takes very little effort. Enter the registration number, wait a few moments, and the report does the hard work for you.
Things You Might Not Otherwise Discover
One of the most common issues uncovered by a history check is outstanding finance.
A lot of people assume that if a vehicle is advertised for sale then everything must already be settled. Usually that’s true, but not always. Every year buyers discover finance agreements attached to vehicles they were about to purchase.
The same goes for insurance write-offs.
Now, a write-off doesn’t automatically make a car a bad buy. Plenty of repaired vehicles are back on the road and giving their owners no trouble at all. The important thing is knowing about it beforehand. If a vehicle has been written off in the past, that’s information you should have before deciding what it’s worth.
Mileage is another area where a car check report can be useful.
Most people have heard the phrase “clocked car“. It’s not as common as it once was, but it still happens. If the recorded mileage doesn’t match up with previous records, that’s usually a sign that more questions need asking.
Then there are stolen vehicle checks. It’s one of those things most buyers never expect to encounter, but if a vehicle has been reported stolen, it’s obviously something you would want to know before handing over your money.
A Small Cost That Can Save a Lot of Money
I remember speaking to a buyer a few years ago who was convinced he’d found a bargain. The car looked fantastic, the seller seemed genuine and the price wasn’t suspiciously low.
Out of habit more than anything else, he ran a car history check.
The report came back showing outstanding finance that hadn’t been mentioned. Whether it was an innocent mistake or something else, we’ll never know. What we do know is that the report changed his mind and potentially saved him thousands of pounds.
That’s really where the value lies.
Most of the time a vehicle history check doesn’t uncover anything dramatic. The report comes back clean, you feel more confident about the purchase and you move on.
Every now and then, though, it finds something that would have been impossible to spot standing on a driveway on a Saturday morning.
When you’re spending hard-earned money on a used car, having that extra information can make all the difference.
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