HPI Failing / Care when buying a Car

djt100

Ok I've not really posted here before but i've just experienced this first hand and thought it worth pointing out.

If a car less then 3 years old is sold to a trader, unless you speak to the first owner of the car the mileage can not be guaranteed.

I'l explian it by using my own experience. I have been looking for a car for my Girlfriend.
Found what I thought was a perfect car, Less than 3 years old, 1 owner, 47,000 miles and Fulll service history.

Buying from an established car dealer with 100 plus cars on the lot, felt safe buying from here. Checked the Car with HPI and came back clear.

Here's the problem, the car had come from a very large leasing firm and being the type of person I am I called them to find out about the car.
They told be the car was sold at auction and gave me the details of the auction.
I called the Auction and found out when the car sold at auction it had a warranted mileage of over 105,000 miles!

Needless to say I was lucky and got all my money back from a very sheepish dealer. But how many cars like this has this dealer and others sold like this. It's actually a bit to easy to do, See if the car is sold to a trader the mileage is not filled in at the time of sale in the V5. So unless you check with the previous owner on a car less than 3 years old. You'll never know if it's 100% correct.

oldagetraveller

I've posted this before but after trading in a car (only 2 + years old) some years ago HPI contacted me, the previous owner, to verify the mileage. It was genuine and I could verify it but the information HPI hold must only be as reliable as that supplied to them by, in this instance, a previous owner.
If I were dishonest and "clocked" the car and still verified the doctored mileage then HPI and the next owner would be no wiser!?

westy69

interesting

Conor_3

The mileage is only guaranteed accurate at one time in the vehicles' life and that's up until the point it rolls off the car transporter the first time it's delivered to a dealership.

harveybobbles

Ive been buying cars from leasing companies for the last 11 years and selling them onto the public from our forecourt of 60 ish cars...

All leasing companies disclose the disposal mileage to the DVLA at time of disposal. It's then hpi type companies who buy this info.

When you say you did a hpi check on it? Did you enter a mileage or leave it blank? Cos if you entered 47,000 miles then the report would have come back with a discrepency.

also you mention that it had FSH covering the 47,000 miles - It was obviously a book that didnt belong to the car or the print out was home made.