a cautionary tale!

Today has been a bit of a nightmare and may be affecting any number of people who like me are unaware of the issue, hence the post! I am undecided at present as to whether to keep my car or trade it up for newer model, and so spoke with an OPC today about a car they are advertising. I was told that under the HPI check my car was down as a Cat 3 total loss in July 2006. My car is in the garage having had no accidents or claims since i owned it and it was HPI checked by OPC Aberdeen before i bought it and i have a full no claims bonus recenlty issued when i changed insurance companies. Consequently i checked with the DVLA who also told me the MYAFTA database was showing my car as a write off, this was why i couldn't tax it online or by phone last year but was able to at the post office. The insurance company denied all knowledge of updating the database with this information, and agreed the car had not been subject to a claim. Evenutally after a full day it has been revealed that the citroen dispatch van which my reg came from (via the dvla) is the vehicle which has been written off, and the details of my car have been incorrectly input by a different insurance company. I am assured that this will be corrected within 24 hours, which i will check tomorrow. However if i had not looked at part ex'ing the car i would never have known that this information was held against my car, no-one informed me as the lawful owner that this had happened. So just be aware that electronic information is not always as it seems, and you may never know about it!!!

Had a similar one myself only last week - HPI showed my car as having finance outstanding. A bit of digging found that it related to a BMW, so no biggie. The OPC were quite happy to take it in P/X without any bother. HPI seem to be somewhat error-prone, don't they? [ ]

My HPI also come out with issues. They were related to one of the VIL characters being a 5 when it should have been an 'S' and so there wasn't a correct match. Duly ignored.

My business partner has a TVR Cerbera and changed his insurance recently and had the same problem. He has owned his personal registration plate for a number of years and had a insurance total write-off on another Cerbera about ten years ago. His most recent insurance company refused insurance on the basis that his current car was a 'write off' even though he has owned it from new without incedent. He wrote to them explaining that the written off car was black and his current car is silver and that the cars are different years anyway (the person on the phone could not 'get it' that the same number could be transfered). Since the letter, his insurance has been re-instated, but he has expressed concern that the information that the insurance companies hold is only as good as the person / persons putting the information on!

Yup, had that with an "S" and a "2" on the C4 - thing was, it was wrong on the V5 too[:'(] Found out when I bought the car 4 years after it was registered - nobody had ever spotted it!. Worth getting it corrected so there are no issues when it comes time to sell...

You would think that HPI markers should be against the VIN not the DVLA license plate. All these stories have happy outcome - but if they get it wrong the other way around....(ie don't mark a car that really should be written off...)

I bought a VW VR6 a few years back and did a HPI check on the reg all was ok, 2 years later went to sell it and it came up as a write off. Cut a long story short the insurance company had logged the wrong details onto the datebase and my reg was clear i should have done a much more in depth check but this was a long time ago and i was a little less experinced with this sort of thing. I took the insurance company to the small claims court as i did not think that i should pay for there mistake and lost. In the end sold the car for £7000 less than its market value. So even if you do an HPI check it does not always mean its clear. Phil

And the Government wants everyone to have full confidence in an ID card system containing 'accurate' personal details about the card holder [8|] ?

well it has taken 4 days not 24 hours but my car is now clear according to the DVLA. The information was not just against the reg but the vin and make and model of the car which is a bit frightening. One of the worrying things is that i was in blissful ignorance until i came to look at selling!! anyhow another happy ending.....