Car bought online salvage auction as HPi clear turns out as Cat A legal advice where do i stand?

neilmcl

bimma said:

My question and concern is why is the salvage agent selling the car on as HPi clear BEFORE the claim has been settled and before the person has been paid out.

They can only go on the information they have at the time, and like you they ascertained it WAS HPI clear.

ElephantBoy57

bimma said:

hi guys

I bought a 65 plate ford Ka off an online salve auction site called raw2k.

This is from their web site.

Salvaged Vehicles. The Salvaged Vehicles offered for sale on the Site shall each be categorised as either Category B, Category C, Category D or Category X.  Unless expressly stated otherwise, all Salvaged Vehicles will have been reported to MIAFTR and will show up on vehicle checks.

Was it classed as a salvaged vehicle and listed as such?

bimma

it was listed as unrecorded salvage vehicle and on my invoice/receipt it stated ABI CATEGEORY UNRECORDED. so neither of the above category applied. i.e not a write off. the damage was as in pics. so looking at it, i thought it came to them as a third party loss i.e the person had third party insurance and their own car was not covered in a fault accident, hence it was not categorised as  a write off.

my Hpi check that i carried out came back green..i.e all clear  too.
The vehicle was sold as unrecorded..however it has now come to light that there was a claim in place for the vehicle which had not been settled and was pending at the time of sale..the salvage agent did not state this and should not have released the car until the claim had been settled. the claim got settled 4 weeks after i purchased it.

My concern is that why did they sell on the car BEFORE the claim got settled...without knowing what they outcome would be..i.e would it be repaired, or would it be written off as scrap or would be it be categorised as a salvage repairable car i.e cat D/N/S/C .

molerat

I think you have 2 avenues here

1. Hope the insurer will change the category.

or

2.  Take the auction house to the SCC.  The judge will work on a principal of whether they acted reasonably or not. 

bimma

can i self represent i a SCC or do i need solicitors and does the winning party get awarded costs too..? so for example if i win and have solicitor..they pay my fees and vise versa if they win 
my main point of argument is they sold a car as hpi clear whilst claim was still pending and failed to disclose this which then led it to being a cat A

AdrianC

Even if you do take them to a court and win, it's very unlikely you'll get anything but the purchase price back.

You also need to consider who you bought from. It wasn't Raw2K - they're merely an intermediary, and their terms are very clear that they are not responsible for the accuracy of the information provided from the vendor.

Ultimately, the information given was correct at the time of the sale. The car had not been categorised. 

ElephantBoy57

bimma said:

it was listed as unrecorded salvage vehicle and on my invoice/receipt it stated ABI CATEGEORY UNRECORDED. so neither of the above category applied. i.e not a write off.

Perhaps they meant that is was a 'Category B, Category C, Category D or Category X' but it haddnt been catagorised yet?

bimma

no mention of it not being categorised yet or a claim pending to indicate that it would be categorised at a later stage mate, i took it as face value that it was hpi clear rather than awaiting a cat

bimma

legally speaking i need to ask whether the salvage auction site is allowed to sell the car whilst there is an insurance claim on going not settled 

AdrianC

bimma said:

legally speaking i need to ask whether the salvage auction site is allowed to sell the car whilst there is an insurance claim on going not settled 

The auction site didn't sell it. The vendor sold it, through the auction site.

Who was the vendor? Raw2k auction pages tell you.