Shopping online and staying safe
The revolution of the internet is here to stay and growing everyday, it has changed the way we buy cars forever making it easy for us to buy it now and have it delivered. But it does have its pitfalls..
The internet is full of scams if your not careful you could easy find yourself handing over lots of your hard earned money for a lemon of a vehicle here are some of my tips for staying safe online and buying your next car safely.
Always HPI check a vehicle your interested in buying it takes a couple of minutes and costs £20.00 this will tell you the vehicles past like how many owners? or if it has a mileage discrepancy this will also be the first signs something is wrong. Be careful to check the not so obvious details like make model fuel and colour these can be easily overlooked yet so obvious.
Alarm bells should be ringing when a seller doesn’t answer a phone or only requests contact via email and claims to be living abroad these scams are the most obvious on eBay. The HPI check should show if a vehicle has outstanding finance this is another common type of scam online today, sellers will often have a vehicle that they may have bought on finance and decided they couldn’t afford it or dont want it anymore so try to sell it to you, this is one to avoid when a seller says they will settle the finance after you pay them when really the seller should disclose they have outstanding finance right from the beginning and are willing to let you pay the finance company direct.
Once you have done all you can digitally make sure you physically inspect and check the vehicle over as private car dealers are usually the worst, take a mechanic with you or pay for an independent inspection, dont agree to meet up at night in a rural location instead try to meet at the sellers home address or business address somewhere you can find them if it all goes turbo. Check the vin numbers against the log book making sure they all match up.If its been in a nasty accident make sure the seller tells you all about it making sure its been repaired correctly, thousands of vehicles are written off in the UK each year and are returned back to the roads using stolen parts or with very shoddy workman ship.
Avoid scams
Make sure you HPI check the vehicle
Meet in a safe mutual location
Dont carry large sums of cash
Ask questions about the history
Check all the paperwork
Never pay without seeing
