Bought & Trying to sell a car with outstanding finance

peterc2609

I bought a car back in November for just under £5k.

It had been advertised on pistonheads... I done a HPI (so I thought) and everythin checked out.

Anyhow, I decided I needed a bigger car so have had it advertised on eBay. Agreed a price with someone, sent them the registration mark and they called me tonight to say there is outstanding finance on it.

I checked the v5 and the previous owners name and address check out, they only owned it for 6 weeks - I presume they bought it to sell on from an auction or somewhere.

The person who was going to buy it off me is calling the finance company tomorrow... and so will I.

Where do I stand? What can I do?

Its a 2005 car with 90,000 miles. Is there anyway to find out ALL previous owners... there have been 4?

Help!

Ta.

iolanthe07

You will have a comeback on the company who did the HPI check. That's what you pay them for - to take the hit if something like this happens. You need to contact them as soon as you have all the facts.

aqueoushumour01

although with these companies, you need to input the VIN number typically to get any real protection. Did you do this?

vaio

As an innocent buyer you should be OK if the car is on hire purchase, the debt remains with the person who took out the finance and the finance company shouldn’t repossess the car

peterc2609

If te car is on HP, then fair enough they can't repossess it... but can I sell it?

harveybobbles

vaio wrote: »

As an innocent buyer you should be OK if the car is on hire purchase, the debt remains with the person who took out the finance and the finance company shouldn’t repossess the car

If the car was bought private then the finance gets passed on to the new owner.

If it was bought from a garage, then its the garages problem.

Ask your ebay buyer if they have the correct details.
Phone the finance company yourself to see if they have any interest in the car.

vaio

harveybobbles wrote: »

If the car was bought private then the finance gets passed on to the new owner.

If it was bought from a garage, then its the garages problem.

Ask your ebay buyer if they have the correct details.
Phone the finance company yourself to see if they have any interest in the car.

Nah, s22 of the Hire Purchase Act 1964 (embodied as s27 of schedule 4 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974) says the first innocent purchaser has good title to goods on which there is outstanding finance but only if they have no knowledge of the finance.

Full text about a third of the way down this link http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?LegType=All+Legislation&title=Consumer+Credit+&searchEnacted=0&extentMatchOnly=0&confersPower=0&blanketAmendment=0&sortAlpha=0&TYPE=QS&PageNumber=1&NavFrom=0&parentActiveTextDocId=436428&ActiveTextDocId=436774&filesize=1773