An online car check is a good investment.
When Alex Gray’s teenage son wanted to buy a used car he went to Trade Me and found two likely prospects: a 1998 Honda Civic advertised as having done 135,000km and a 1996 Mazda Familia ("registered new in New Zealand") with only 78,000km on the clock.
They weren’t what they seemed. A car-check website revealed that the Honda had actually done 234,000km: in the period between two WOF checks the odometer had been wound back from 215,000 to 116,000km. The claims for the Mazda were even more dubious – it turned out to be a 1989 Japanese import that had been “clocked” by 200,000km.
For less than $20 you can check a car’s history online at websites such as carjam, checka, motorweb or aa.co.nz. Simply enter the registration number and these sites can tell you whether the car has been stolen, whether there’s any money owing on it, and what the odometer readings at each WOF check were. You can also see whether it’s a used import by comparing the year of manufacture with the year the car was first registered in New Zealand.
It’s well worth doing this. Motorweb says that one in three of the vehicles it checks has money owing or an inconsistent odometer, or has been reported stolen. See our free car-buying guide for more advice on buying a used car.
Alex is concerned that the photo of the Mazda on Trade Me didn’t show the registration number. Trade Me told him that it didn’t request that information as many vehicles listed on its website weren’t currently registered. You can always ask for a registration number – and, if possible, check out the car as you would for any private sale.
More from consumer.org.nz
- Car-buying guide - our free guide to buying new and used cars
- Which car - safety ratings, reliability and features for hundreds of cars
- Car reliability - our 2011 member survey
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While a prepurchase check is a very good idea I agree with Alaine, don't necessarily leap to the foul play scenario. The odo readings are entered by testing station staff and mistakes are fairly common. It is very easy to hit a wrong digit and add or subtract a 100k to a vehicles reading. The figure should be a guide only & any anomalies should be checked, don't just assume that the car has been "clocked".
I wouldn't take the odometer readings as gospel especially if it is an import and there is a discrepancy between the reading taken at the border check and the first registration. We had a VIR done on our car when we were going to use it as a trade in and the odometer reading at the time of import was supposedly 111,111 but only 32,000 when first registered. It seems a bit too coincidental that the reading was all 1's on the clock and suggests human error (or they didn't actually read it) rather than anything actually being wrong.
I was seriously considering a car at one point, however a car check showed money owing on the vehicle. Imagine how stupid I would feel having the car taken away from me for the financial responsibilities of another person because they had a financial interest on it. Thankfully though, all the other cars I checked turned out to be fine. Once you wish to seriously consider the vehicle, and you have test driven it, you should always check it before making the purchase. It's not THAT expensive to do.