Check Before You Buy
We find that there are two types of people who rely on our service
1. Those who want to check a car before they buy it. This is always the best advice.
2. Those who own a car but have a niggle about it… Replacing parts which are inconsistent with the mileage, excess wear on seats or pedal rubbers, Knocks and bangs from the suspension.
For consumers in 1. Finding out before a purchase is always the best solution as you have the information to hand to make an informed buying decision.
For consumers in 2. This is a situation many people find themselves in after checking a registration number against our data base. But don’t loose faith there are options available to you. Taking the right advice before talking to the seller is important. If you have bought your vehicle from a dealer/garage we can help. Also many traders try and pretend to be a private seller online and will try to fob you off with all sorts of excuses, so don’t be duped.
Is the Car You’re buying or purchased an Ex-Taxi?
A dealer or garage may have no idea of the previous use of a vehicle, so when confronted with the information, they may be surprised. However, as a professional motor trader it is their responsibility to undertake due diligence checks. This guidance from Trading Standards clearly points out their responsibilities to check if a car was once an ex taxi.
There are then those sellers who know full well that they’re selling an ex-taxi/ex-police car and keep this valuable information from you in order to profit from omitting these details.
For both of these sellers, once approached they may throw up arguments such as “I did not know”, “I don’t have to disclose the previous use” or “Your information is wrong, I know it’s never been an Uber”. All of these excuses are false and misleading; they’re used to put doubt in your mind.
So remember you have rights.
In my experience of a consumer issue relating to the purchase of an ex-taxi, all the reptutable companies were initially shocked, but then worked with the consumer towards a quick, amicable settlement.
We strongly recommend you never buy a vehicle without conducting a provenance check
✔Approx. 385,000 cars get written off each year
✔WARNING…Not all cars written off go on the miaftr (insurance write off register). That means you can buy a write off even though your HPI check says its clear!
✔1 in 4 cars has something to hide
✔Provenance providers are not the same! A big name does not guarantee the best results. Only a few companies are offering data for the next generation of provenance checks. Here’s two that we 100% back.
✔Approx. 75,000 cars were recorded stolen in 2020
What makes a good provenance check into a
“Next Generation” provenance check?
Ex-taxi/private hire/Uber details, ex-police car details, ex-public sector vehicle details, salvage history details are just a few…
Did you know? Approx 300,000 taxis are licensed every year which equates to 6000 per week!
Sometimes taxis are licensed more than once in different parts of the UK. For this reason we do offer a more comprehensive back ground check service (contact for further details).
With our VALCheck we’re able to check any registration number against our database with any positive hits being returned in a simple and easy to read certificate.
Many councils over type expired licenses when issuing a new taxi/private hire license (including the registration number). Which means without our service millions of previous taxi/private hire licensing records would be lost, resulting in many more ex taxis being sold undeclared.