HPI check

vix2000

Do you need to do an HPI check if you are buying from a dealer?

KierNet

Better safe than sorry in my eyes. £20 for piece of mind.

Notmyrealname

I told Quicks to go whistle. A HPI check doesn't guarantee its not been in an accident and if it has outstanding finance on it then thats their problem, not mine.

thenudeone

If it's a big dealer just make sure that you pay something (even £1 will do) on a credit card. The you don't need to pay for an HP check anyway, because the card company will be jointly liable IN FULL if the dealer goes bust and there turns out to be something amiss with the car.

A main dealer will do an HPI check anyway and should be happy to print off a copy for you free of charge (they have always done for me).

vix2000

It is not a main dealer but a small car lot. It has been there for a long time. I have paid the deposit on a credit card.

The dealer has told me that they bought the car from an insurance company and it was a stolen recovered but with no damage at all. It is definately not a cat c or d. He says they have had it in for a long time.

thenudeone

I wouldn't worry about it in that case.

sam1970

Let me tell you this interesting story...six years ago I bought a car from a major dealership (Famous German car). it was one year old with 10000 miles on the colck according to their HPI check. I collected the car and within 24 hours I spoted that it was clocked (discrepancy between the mileage in the contract and what is on the service book)..They denied any wrong doing but computer testiing at the dealersship showed that the car actually did 25000 miles. to keep me quite they offered me a brand new car with a good discount. I insisted on keeping the clocked car until the new car arrives. During that time I had a motor way accident with the clocked car as the engine switched off while i was on the fast lane and the front of the car was damaged. They took it on the chin and collected their damaged, clocked car and sent me the new one. They confirmed to me that they will never sell that car again as it was unsafe to drive and that they will sue the company which verified the mileage for their losses....It did not end there...the rest of the story is in another message

vix2000

thenudeone wrote: »

I wouldn't worry about it in that case.

is that serious or tongue in cheek, please?

sam1970

Rest of the story...6 months after I had my new car, I had a phone call from someone in London. Apparantly he found my name on logbook as a previous owner of a car he bought from a major dealership in London. He said that the car been back for repairs 3 times in two months and he asked me if i knew any thing about the car problems. Needless to say it was the clocked, accident damaged car...my local dealer repaired the damage and shifted it to another dealer 100 miles away who sold it as if it was perfect with the lower mileage. I told the guy the story, he confronted them and they gave him a brand new car for the same money he paid for the used one.
Believe me we are talking here about a car maker who sell cars worth over £200,000 so my car which is worth £25000 was peanuts for them...The morals...always do you your own checks

Sgt_Pepper_2

vix2000 wrote: »

It is not a main dealer but a small car lot. It has been there for a long time. I have paid the deposit on a credit card.

The dealer has told me that they bought the car from an insurance company and it was a stolen recovered but with no damage at all. It is definately not a cat c or d. He says they have had it in for a long time.

If the insurance company have paid out it may well be a cat d.

pinkteapot

Yes. Absolutely. We bought from a main Ford dealer and did an HPI check. It showed a mileage discrepancy. Turns out, the dealer had serviced the car and supplied the mileage to the DVLA. The car had done 11,000 miles (it was only a year old). The DVLA had typed that in as 112,000. This was listed on the HPI check which then flagged a warning when we ran the report.

The dealer told us not to bother with an HPI check as they did one before accepting the car as trade-in. Because we ran the report, we told the dealer to get it sorted before we'd take the car. They contacted DVLA who got the erroneous mileage entry removed from the database.

If we hadn't done the report, it would have shown up when we eventually sell the car. When we do, the car could be ten years old and actually have over 100k miles on the clock and look like it's done a lot of miles. At that point, it would be harder for us to prove that the discrepancy was just a DVLA mistake and that the car hadn't been clocked somewhere down the line.

Because we were refusing to take the car until the report was clean, the dealer was pretty motivated and got it sorted within about 24 ours. HPI let us re-run the report for free to check it had cleared.