I bought a Honda Civic at a British Car Auctions in Enfield 3 weeks ago.

It was listed as having 2 service stamps. When I later inspected the Service Book closely, I saw that there were 9 stamps, the last 7 all bearing the same signature (with the same pen?) and stamp.

I have tried exhaustively to find a single reference to the service company whose stamps were used and it seems not to exist.

The MOTs from 2006 to 2011 were all carried out in Tyne and Wear but the ‘faked’ service stamps from 2003 to 2009 were all from Stevenage.

I have now checked the MOT history and can see that the mileage noted on the later service stamps is different from that on the MOT notices. I can only presume that BCA realised that the later 7 stamps were faked; otherwise they would have listed the car with 9 service stamps.

As they didn’t list all 9 stamps, this suggests that BCA suspected dishonesty, which would indicate that something was wrong, but made no comment at the auction.

The car came with an MOT (VT20) but the advisory notice (VT32) was missing. On checking the MOT history I found that there were 4 items on the VT32.

On a minor issue, the car was listed as having a CD player but when I tried to make it work I discovered that it was defective and not even connected.