Programme on C4 last night - covered the usual stuff, shortage of parts etc and supply and demand which in turn has driven up the used car prices. They found a VW ID3 (?) which would normally retail for mid-£30k on sale, in a dealers, for £59999! Seems this is not just an isolated case.
More worrying were the numerous examples of cars that had been declared write-offs that had subsequently been repaired and appeared on sale though Cazoo and Motorpoint who supposedly run countless checks to ensure this shouldn’t be happening. And the customers that had discovered their cars were write-offs, gained full refunds from the retailer only to see that car being put on sale again, at the same price.
Shocking

not restricted to car supermarkets and smaller dealers either.

I once bought an Evoque from a LR dealer, only to have no end of problems that were looked at by a different dealer who declared the car had been in accident and poorly repaired. Supplying dealer denied all knowledge despite the LR approved spiel saying that LR dont sell accident damaged cars.

Don't forget that "write off" falls into a number of categories.

Cat A – Car has suffered severe structural damage and cannot be repaired, nor can it be stripped for spares
Cat B – Car cannot be repaired, but it can be stripped for parts to use on other cars
Cat S – Structural damage that can be repaired
Cat N – Non-structural damage that can be repaired

The ones being resold are Cat S and Cat N.

Cars can be declared write-off on S and N for purely economic reasons. That's not solely the cost of the repair, it also includes the cost of managing the claim. If a car will be off the road for 2 months because a part isn't available, the cost to the insurer of keeping the customer in a hire car is sufficient to lead to a write-off in many instances. It can be really quite trivial damage and still a Cat S if the parts are hard to get.

A competent repairer with time on their side can easily perform a top rate repair and make a profit on the resale. As usual, facts tend to spoil a good TV show so they focus on the "how dare they" moral outrage angle and ignore the realities of complex supply chains leading to perfectly good cars getting Cat N or Cat S rating. Current driveway contents:
2021 V60 Cross Country B5
2009 FL2 dog bus and shooting wagon

On Order: 2023 Fisker Ocean Ultra - deposit paid.

This was a Dispatches programme, so not sure they were after the moral outrage angle - the programme started with why prices were so high and went on to illustrate the ways some supposedly reputable dealers were perhaps not being as ‘diligent’ as we’re being led to believe so as to create a supply.

There is a lot of money to be made in buying and selling cars, just like houses.

Lots of programmes on TV about both which glorify how much you can make by a quick repair and lick of paint.

True, some do a proper job and then loose money (or the competition).

Also, how many owners are tempted to use cheap or non-standard parts, then fail to declare this when selling.

I worry that, in the future, that electronic safety systems, now fitted to all new cars, will be tampered with (or have cheap look-alike replacements) which will fail when needed.

A worry is that it is cheaper to spend money on creating the perception of good service, than to give good service.

(As you may guess, I spent many years of my career, fighting this battle) FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 77k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 11th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)

Simon at PowerfulUK bought a RRS from Copart, knowing it was damaged repaired.

the rear quarter and other areas showed signs of poor repair, but when they stripped it back at their premises they found curtain airbags had deployed but then been hidden behind new headlining, seat belt pretensioners had fired but had been tampered with so that the seat belts still retracted. There were a ton of other hidden faults too that had been covered over.

As above, this is what worried me about some of those “repaired” vehicles, that fact they do not replace the airbags but just reset warnings, so you could buy a car without any operating airbags or seat belt tensioners at all, that’s really criminal.

I assume it is still a legal requirement for a reseller to declare a vehicle has been a right off in advertising? Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

For a whole pile of reasons, it can take many months for cars to be recorded on HPI following a Cat S or Cat N write-off. Sometimes the insurer never gets around to updating the record. In such instances, the dealer can say "we ran an HPI check and it was clear"

That's where the more..... thorough services of vcheck come in.

If you check a vehicle on vcheck it trawls the various salvage and disposal auctions as well, and links to the salvage yard pictures so you can decide for yourself if it is something you would be happy to buy.

As an example, this car was NOT recorded on HPI when this advert was up on AutoTrader earlier this year.

Click image to enlarge

This was the sort of stuff on the programme, but no mention was made to previous history by those dealers

Dealers continue to hide behind "It's HPI Clear" when it's long been known that there are flaws in the HPI service, as a result of slow or non-existent updates from insurers.

The more word gets around that HPI is not the gold standard it was once considered to be, the better. Current driveway contents:
2021 V60 Cross Country B5
2009 FL2 dog bus and shooting wagon

On Order: 2023 Fisker Ocean Ultra - deposit paid.

Very relevant thread on Pistonheads at the minute about this very issue:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&t=1998690 Landrover - turning owners into mechanics since 1948

2014 Orkney grey Freelander SD4 GS.
2004 Zambezi silver Discovery 2 Td5 (Gone)
1963 Surf blue Morris Mini Minor Super de Luxe (my little toy)

One page in and I remember why I don't post on PH any more. There's some utter horlicks spoken with absolute confidence  Current driveway contents:
2021 V60 Cross Country B5
2009 FL2 dog bus and shooting wagon

On Order: 2023 Fisker Ocean Ultra - deposit paid.

As above HPI check is the most basic of checks, it needs some legislation (Here we go again big brother) to make sure dealers do a thorough warranted check, easily done for them but presently very inconvenient if they do. Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

NoDo$h wrote:

One page in and I remember why I don't post on PH any more. There's some utter horlicks spoken with absolute confidence

You can get a vehicle removed from the CAT register. There are many reasons a car can be written off, not just due to damage, as alluded to by No Do$h.
Check out this video.