I keep seeing adverts for cars where the seller claims to be selling on behalf of a friend. Often a friend who has emigrated.
It sounds like a good way to get round the name/address on the V5 being different to the person I'm talking to. And for them not to know much about the car.
I've walked away from two in the last week - am I right to be so suspicious?
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Not totally. Im selling my sisters car on her behalf because both she and her fiance work 10-12 hour days and simply dont have the time to handle enquiries about the car whereas I do as I work from home, plus as its an MGF, I know the cars inside out.
I am however offering to do the handover from my sisters address as thats just across town and its on the V5. I also have the same surname as my sister so its not quite as dodgy sounding as some.
Treat each situation as per its merits.
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My neighbour is doing this completely legitimately with his sister's car (she has emigrated) and my brother in law did it for a friend of his a few years ago. It does happen. That said it is a simple excuse for someone not to register a car.
As Stunorthants says, treat each case individually, and walk away if you feel at all uneasy.
Cheers
DP
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I would start from the presumption that the person is a trader...............unless you are persuaded otherwise, and can satisfy yourself that the seller in genuine.
there will be occaisional times when the person is really selling on behalf of a friend , but remember there are loads of home traders posing as private sellers to avoid their proper responsibilities regarding warranties etc and all of them will have a "story" why their name is not on the V5.
among those I've heard:
the car belongs to -
A relative who died
Son/daughter who's moved away/to Uni
MiL/FiL gone into care
son/daughter but car registered to Uncle/Aunt to get lower insurance
and of course
bought car recently for wife/mother/father/son/ and they didn't like it as it was toobig/small/fast/ auto not auto etc etc
If you get as far as the house - look around, maybe not on the actual drive but in the street outside there maybe a few freshly valeted untaxed cars parked up
Plenty of other cars for sale.
CodeRed
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I once sold a BMW 318 on behalf of some very dubious friends of my daughter who had left the country. It had a disgusting interior, a very noisy gearbox, a clonk in the n/s front suspension and the clutch pedal set six inches higher than the brake pedal.
They wanted £1000 for it. I deemed it worth £300 to someone prepared to spend another 700 or so to get it more or less OK. They said OK and I sold it to a journalist friend, listing what it needed. He took it to some fool round the corner who told him quite wrongly that the transmission problem was the diff, not the gearbox. In the end he didn't do anything about it at all, just drove around in it keeping it road legal for two years. I am quite tolerant of slightly-foxed motors but that one was beyond a joke. I was shocked that my pal could stand the horrid thing as it was, and I suppose quite impressed. Of course he has been in even more African taxis than I have.
His girl friend, a barrister, has been somewhat frosty towards me ever since, clearly convinced that I had hustled him into a bad buy. Such is life, innit?
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Doing anything "on behalf of a friend" is such a euphemism for dodginess or embarasing complaints that it's a wonder anyone still uses the expression.
It carries as much credo as the opening line "I work for esteemed Nigerian bank, this is confidential for you".
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There just been an item on our local (Manchester) BBC news about someone who bought a stolen Mini that had its number plate and VIN copied from a pukka car. There's no obvious way of picking this up.
I guess if the address was genuine and correct then that would be some reassurance but if the address is wrong then alarm bells should start to ring.
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Doing anything "on behalf of a friend" is such a euphemism for dodginess or embarasing complaints that it's a wonder
'Nothing personal, you unnerstand? I'm doing it on behalf of a friend of a friend.'
BAM!
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