I've not known any dealer do checks on my trade-ins, not while I was there anyway. In virtually every case, the salesman has walked round the car, looked at the mileage, looked in Glasses Guide and then carried on the negotiations - only once did they even start the engine.

I don't know what the statistics are but few dealers seem to put trade-ins back on their own forecourt - they seem to simply move them through the trade - and then buy stock to sell - not surprising as trade-ins won't be the same age as the cars being sold.

Some dealers do a HPI check on a car before sale but many don't.

Hi Dizzle,

How did you get on with this?

IVe previously worked in the motortrade for car supermarkets and main dealers and can confirm that both do perform a car check on P/X vehicles but unless you intend to take the car the same day they do not perform the car check in front of you to save time. if anything turns up on the report prior to completion the dealer will contact you immediatly.

In the case of dealers buying from auction, all major auction houses check the vehicles history prior to the vehicle auction. On top of that many auction houses provide data to databases to help vehciel check providers in reducing mileage fraud etc.

The data you would need in order to create your own vehicle check would need to come from various sources and believe me this is not easy.

First of all the DVLA charge a fortune to access their data. I believe it is around 90K a year. They also have very strick rules on how its used.

The Police. you would need access to the PNC to check if a vehicle is reported as stolen. I doubt they will give this info away easily.

Insurance data in order to check if a car has been writen off. This wont come easy as guess what, the association of british insurers database is run by hpi who will do all they can to protect their business (you cant blame them).

Mileage data is also hard to get hold of as it comes from so many sources including dealers, the national mileage register, DVLA, BVRLA and even the likes of quick fit. ever wondered why they ask your mileage when you buy tyres?

Finance data. this is controled by equifax and experian who also own Autocheck and their is such tight regulation on this info it is almost impossible to get hold of.

Maybe look at being an advertiser for someone else. At least in the begining anyway to see if its worth your while.

Good luck.

There are number of websites in the market that offer this service

it’s not only about to be able to build a software to pull data from different source, but be able to take your product in to the market and face your competitors in real word.

There are some big players in the market who spend 6 digit figures for google AdWords campaign per month (I heard).

I would recommend to conduct a thorough market research and competitor analytics before action on your plan.

I recently noticed Car Analytics website offer pretty much all basic information for free, guess its good enough before you make a decision

Edited by Avant on 12/09/2018 at 01:35

How did your parents get cheated? Didthey buy from a dealer or privatly?

If you buy a used car, you have to tax it (before hand) and insure it. So you have to type in various numbers from the logbook in order to tax it, so the Government car tax website would have flagged up that you can't buy tax the car, as the numbers are all wrong. It should have flagged up the problem them?

What other checks could they have done? May be compare the VIN number on the V5 logbook and the car. Also, if buying privately, make sure buying from the address stated on the logbook.

Other companies are providing similar services, so I am not sure what else you can offer.

However, I do think that buying a nearly new car is a snake pit. I recall seing a nearly car with 30,000 miles on the clock, but given the wear and tear on the steering wheel, it looked as if it has done 80,000 miles. I think in the first 3 years, there is a danger period, where cars are clocked back. Servicing internal is now 24months, so there is a lack of service history. So people can turn the clock back and make thousands by incresaing thge value of their cars.Some main dealers, do record the mileage (e.g. Mazda), they have a centralised electronic database. Other dealers don't have the same system.

I've been in the trade 10 years. Here is our usual process for checking a vehicle:

1. make sure it has the reg showing on listing. Has some mention of vehicle service.

2. Check the vehicle in more details on sites such as this part of important to make sure we get as much data for free.

3. We then process and get a HPI check or use a site like the one above to get a more details history background check to make sure it is not stolen or has any outstanding finance.

Then we focus on the negotiations.

Hope this helps :)

Nathan

Warrington Cars

Edited by leaseman on 16/01/2024 at 15:11