Dodgy Cars group on Facebook

[Jobbo]

I’ve been following this group since last year; it’s run by the people behind Vcheck and has many examples of cars which have been sold, damaged, at salvage auctions but not Cat recorded for HPI purposes.

Mostly it’s recent cars but I’ve just seen their post yesterday of a Ferrari 550:

Seems a very worthwhile check to carry out on any used purchase.

[Nathan]

Shameful how insurance companies aren't applying as many categories in order to bolster salvage values.

[mik]

Scarey.

So how do these slip through the recording/categorisation process.

Edit: and it is recorded as previous write-off, but not categorised?

[Rich B]

It's a weird old system though isn't it. It would only be a Cat D if the insurance company thought it wasn't financially worth repairing, if the car was worth a bit more, it might have been repaired by them all day long and not had any history to say it had. As it stands, someone else thought it was financially worth it to repair it.

Scary that almost any car could have this shady past though! Who knows how well this one has been repaired!

[Jobbo]

Most of the cars I’m sure are written off by the insurance companies but the Cat markers simply aren’t recorded. Negligence, deliberate - whatever, it’s still bad for us as buyers.

[Jobbo]

I forgot to mention why I found the group. It was mentioned when I was reading about a main dealer nearly new approved-used car which was found to be an unrecorded write-off. Don’t assume anything no matter how reputable the seller appears to be; most, even the main dealers, simply don’t do anything more than an HPI check

[Nefarious]

The problems of the insurance repair industry are multifarious, starting with the fact that there is a massive gap between the true cost of repair and the price "approved" repairers charge. Third-party payment problem - someone else is footing the bill, so there is no incentive to price competitively.
Also, to minimise payouts, insurance companies use an auction-price based valuation system, which artificially and consistently undervalues cars.
Therefore, when they broadly class Cat D as "repair costs exceeding 60%" of the cars value, the stated repair costs are often double what they should be, and is compared to a vehicle valuation only 85% of the true market value. As a result, insurance companies are willing to write cars off when the true repair cost is only around 25% of the true market value. Leaves a substantial gap for people to have their cars repaired elsewhere, especially when the insurance cos are totally willing to negotiate a "cash settlement" rather than formally write a car off.

[GG.]

Yes, nothing short of criminal really. When having cars repaired I've been blatantly told are you paying privately or is it an insurance job and then been given two separate (and not close) numbers for each option...

[Jobbo]

Entirely agree with you both - however, more relevant to us as buyers is that there are cars out where which have been through salvage auctions in a damaged state and have been put back together with no disclosure. I can imagine Vcheck's business model is to be bought out by the big HPI check people for their dataset, but for the moment at least there's a way for us to do some more due diligence when buying.