Buying a car that was on private plates

samsung_laptop

I found a car on freeads but it's showing the car on private plates but they are not included. So when I view the car what do I need to check on the documents.

consumers_revenge

Basically he needs to get the plates off first and then it will get a new reg and that will be yours. I believe he gets retention on his til they go on a new car. You should keep the MOTs relevant to being on the car your buying http://www.rac.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?20422-Buying-a-car-when-owner-removing-private-number-plate


Theres plenty of info on the web


HTH


CR

pappa_golf

all the expense's are down to the seller , he pays for the transfer or retention of his prized plate , and the car will (where ever possible) go back to the vrn that was first issued to the car


, the seller will get a letter of authority to get new plates made , the V5 will follow shortly after , in the days of paper MOTs , the DVLA also used to send out a new MOT with the new number on it


due to the closure of DVLA offices , expect this to take several weeks


the seller should have done all this before advertising the car

samsung_laptop

The seller is selling the plates on retention.

BeenThroughItAll

If the seller does the plate retention online, it takes five minutes and will tell them to put the old VRM back in immediately.

Only available Mon-Sun 7-7 though, because DVLA's website likes to have 12 hours rest every day.

tattycath

Check there is no outstanding finance. (Not just on the personal plate).
My sister bought a car and checked this, but it was only checked on the private plate, not the actual original plate. So it showed as clear, no finance. 12 months later she was looking to changing the car and it flagged up that it wasn't hers to sell as it was on finance (even though she bought it with cash), she lost the car and her money.

BeenThroughItAll

tattycath wrote: »

Check there is no outstanding finance. (Not just on the personal plate).
My sister bought a car and checked this, but it was only checked on the private plate, not the actual original plate. So it showed as clear, no finance. 12 months later she was looking to changing the car and it flagged up that it wasn't hers to sell as it was on finance (even though she bought it with cash), she lost the car and her money.

Sounds like they used the wrong sort of history check then. An HPI check would have given you a guarantee on the car if the data had been incorrect, but the cheap and useless text-check type services don't pull the full details quite often and don't cope well with plate changes. HPI uses VIN matching to identify where plates have been applied or transferred to avoid the problem occurring.

Lesson learned - do a proper HPI check.