Buying a used car: how to tell a genuine history check from a lookalike
Buying a used car doesn’t have to be a leap of faith, but the check you rely on to protect you is only as good as the company and the data behind it. HPI’s guide explains what a proper vehicle history check should tell you, and how to spot one that falls short. There is no great secret to buying a used car safely, and most of what keeps you out of trouble is a mix of research, patience, and the kind of common sense that tells you a deal which looks too good to be true usually is. The single most useful thing you can do before handing over any money is to find out what the car went through before it reached you, which is exactly what a vehicle history check is designed to do. The difficulty is that history checks have themselves become a crowded and confusing market, and not every report that looks the part will give you the protection you think you are paying for. Why a history check matters A car can look immaculate on the driveway and still carry a past that becomes your problem the moment you buy it. If there is outstanding finance against the vehicle, it may legally belong to the finance company rather than the person selling it, and you could end up losing both the car and the money you paid for it. If it has been stolen, written off by an insurer or had its mileage wound back, there is every chance none of that will be visible during a viewing or a test drive, however carefully you look. These aren’t rare occurrences either. Every day, HPI’s data identifies around 975 vehicles recorded as written off and 726 with a mileage discrepancy, which gives some idea of how often these problems surface in cars that are being offered for sale. What a free check can and can’t tell you Search for a vehicle check online, and you will find no shortage of websites offering one for free, and some of them do provide genuinely useful information. Much of it, however, comes from publicly available sources such as DVLA vehicle records and the government’s MOT history service, both of which you can look up yourself on GOV.UK at no cost. That information is well worth having, because it will confirm the car’s make, colour, tax and MOT status, and the mileage recorded at each MOT test, which is a good starting point for spotting anything that doesn’t add up. What it won’t tell you is whether the car has outstanding finance, because that data is held by finance companies and is only available through formal agreements with them. The same is true of the full picture on insurance write-offs and police stolen vehicle records, which is why a free check should be treated as a first look rather than the final word, and why many free services exist mainly to sell you an upgrade. If there is outstanding finance against the vehicle, it may legally belong to the finance company rather than the person selling it. Buyers should not rely on the seller’s promise to clear the debt. Ask the finance company for written confirmation that the agreement has been settled, or arrange for the outstanding balance to be paid directly to the lender as part of the sale. Do not complete the purchase until you are satisfied that the finance has been cleared. Why the name causes confusion One of the quirks of the used car market is that “HPI check” has become everyday shorthand for any vehicle history check, in much the same way that people say they will “Google” something, whichever search engine they actually use. As a result, plenty of buyers search for an HPI check, click on the first result and assume that is what they have bought, when the report has no connection to HPI whatsoever. Some of those alternative providers are perfectly reputable businesses that simply compete for your custom. Others are much harder to pin down, with no company details, no registered address, and links to terms and privacy pages that lead nowhere, and, in some cases, listings on online marketplaces and app stores that borrow the HPI name to appear more established than they really are. HPI regularly hears from consumers who have bought one of these reports and run into trouble, from incomplete or inaccurate vehicle data to terms that quietly enrolled them in a recurring payment when they thought they were making a single purchase. Five checks that separate a genuine history report from a lookalike Before you pay for any vehicle history check, it is worth spending a couple of minutes on the following questions, none of which require any specialist knowledge and all of which could save you a great deal of money and hassle further down the line. 1. Can you tell who you are buying from? A legitimate provider will make it easy to find its full company name, a registered address and a UK company registration number, which you can check for free on the Companies House website in a matter of seconds. The links at the bottom of the page to its terms and conditions and privacy policy should open properly and actually say something meaningful. If you can’t work out who runs the site, you will have nobody to turn to if the report turns out to be wrong. 2. Does it say where its data comes from? A history check is only ever as reliable as the information behind it, so a genuine provider should be open about its sources. For a comprehensive check, those will include finance companies, insurers, the police and the DVLA; the HPI Check, for example, draws on data from 45 UK police forces alongside finance and insurance records. Vague references to “trusted partners” or “multiple databases” with no names attached should make you cautious, because a provider with good data generally has every