pslewis

This may be a dumb question - but - if I have my scooby stolen and unrecovered or destroyed .... insurance pays out ... and owns car ....... what about the plate???

AND - if you buy it off insurance co. and put it on another scooby it will show that one as a write off/stolen recovered??? how do you get out of that

AND - you can bet its still registered on the police computer as stolen for months after its all been sorted

Anyone any answers???????

Pete

S55 DVM

I may be wrong here, but the plate technically belongs to the DVLA, you are just a keeper. You should get the plate transferred without too much trouble. No doubt it will take a while to go thru the sysytem, but eventually it will be cleared onto another car.

David.

salsa-king

this question has come up b4,
but i have a private plate for the last 7yrs and i understand that the plate is YOURS as you have bought it from the dvla (at sometime)and if your car gets stolen/writenoff you can cancel the plate from that car (via dvla) and change it to the nu car, not sure how long it would take though.
but if you own the plate it's yours and not the car's! so the plate goes where you want it to go!
ring dvla to find out more info on it.

AWD

Does the 'written off' register records number plates with cars or does it use chassis numbers. It would be better if they used chassis numbers as it is very easy to mess around with plates.

Give the DVLA general enquiries (in Swansea) a ring and they'll set the record straight. Mind you, you might have to hold for a while before you get through.

Dippy

Having unfortunately just written off my Scoob I'm finding out about this right now! I only know about retentions though.

The DVLA do have the right to withdraw the reg from you, although they would need good reason to do so.

Until the insurance company pays out, you still own the car. You need to sort out the retention before giving up your V5.

Check your policy - my policy says that I should have told them that the reg was mine. I didn't, but fortunately that doesn't seem a problem.

Officially it can take 2-4 weeks to get your reg back to retention. During this time the car must be available for inspection and must remain taxed. If you go for a tax refund too soon, the DVLA may refuse the retention.

The car must have a reg. The DVLA will give you a brand new one to put on it. If you put your application in via a VRO, you get this new reg immediately, but still have to wait for yours to be officially put on retention.

I guess that a direct transfer will be more tricky. Also I guess that if the car is stolen and unrecovered then you will lose the reg, but I may be wrong.



[This message has been edited by Dippy (edited 29 September 2000).]

Steve Howat

Hi

As I believe it, if you remove a personal plate, either because you are selling or the car is written off, the original registration number will be returned (unless it was worth some dosh to the DVLA). This should happen within a couple of weeks of sending the transfer docs (if it is going on a new vehicle or on retention. The insurance company has no claims to a personal registration as it is just an identification mark and not coverable by car insurance. However, if the car is stolen then you can't re use the number for 12 months or until the fuzz find the car. It is then yours to use again .

I could be talking pants but a good friend of mine who has about 8 personal registrations told me this and I do believe him. After all, he gave me one of his registrations!

Steve.

harryh

Salsa, I'm pretty sure that's wrong. You need to put in the transfer docs to the DVLA BEFORE the insurance company pay out and therefore technically own the car (and Reg). A plate stays with a car until death do they part.

Dave T-S

See similar thread elsewhere.

I've moved my personal plate four times in the last six years.

The plate is always DVLA property, not yours. They just "rent" it to you (for a fee, of course!!).

It does NOT stay with the car for life. The primary identifier of a car is the VIN no.

If you transfer or put the plate on retention the DVLA/VRO do NOT put the original reg back on. They issue a new age related plate.

There have been cases of a car with a personal plate being written off and the insurance co have paid out, the salvage (i.e. the remains of the car) become their property and they have seized the plate as part of the salvage and sold it.

As I put in the other thread if you put a personal plate on a car you should always write to your ins co at the time of telling them the reg change and state that in the event of a total loss to the car the plate remains your (DVLA's!) property and should NOT form part of the salvage. They cannot and will not argue with this unless you have tried to increase the insured value of the car to allow for the plate (and unless you have insured agreed value with them they will apply market value to it anyway).

Ade

My car used to have a private plate. The previous owner took it off and put it on retention before he sold the car.

The reg that's on the car is the one originally issued by the DVLA when it was new. Is this just luck that it got the old one back again?

There is a note on the V5 that says "non transferable registration". Obviously this means the current mark can not be transferred to another vehicle, but does that mean that I can no longer have a private plate on the car?

Adrian.

salsa-king

as i said i may have been wrong with what i went on about, but STEVE HOWAT sound as if he is on the right lines!
my parents car with private plate, when plate got transfered had the original plate it had back in 1984, back onto it.
but when my got changed the plate was not the same as b4!

just ask the dvla.

as you all know you can't put a newer suffix plate on a car than the year of the car!
ie
a 1992 (k reg) can't have a 1996 p reg put onto it.
you can go older but not newer with a reg. plate!