W R X

Hi all,

Firstly sorry for the lengthy post.

I wonder if anyone can offer some sensible advice to a quandry I am having please? I picked up my car in February 2008 from a large dealer in Surrey. Car was great, low miles, almost perfect condition, right price. Basically it was exactly what I was after (02 STI Prodrive Style). I had seen quite a few before I spotted this one and it stood out as the best by a country mile. I put a deposit down and carried out an HPI check. Everything was fine, previous owners were 3 as stated by the dealer.

If I was being picky the only thing that I wasnt 100% on was the personalised number plate but that was in the "process" of being changed back.

Right Ill cut to the chase. Two days later I went back to pick up the car, sat down with the dealer, went through all the paper work. At this point he said that he only had a photo copy of the V5 but the current owner was bringing the original in and I would get the V5c (the slip bit) in the post shortly. Being like a kid at Xmas I didnt take too much notice to this....

6 months later of constantly hassling them and I finally get a V5c through the post and get the car registered in my name! I sent comprehensive letter to the DVLA with the slip explaining the situation, giving them proof of purchase for the date in February etc etc.Finally to my point.....I get the V5 through and everything looked fine. As you can imagine I was relieved to finally have the car reistered to me! However.....its listed previous registered keepers now says 5 instead of 3. Like I say I HPI'd at the time (on the original plate which its now on) and it came up as 3 owners and all of the paper work matches to 3 owners (receipts and servicing only made out to 3 owners over the life of the car etc...) so I am almost certain I am the 4th owner in 7 years as opposed to the 6th!!

Anyone got any ideas how I can try and get to the bottom of this? I get the feeling that I will be banging my head against a brick wall going back to the DVLA now. The car has been faultless in the past 14 months and other than this un-needed hassle I have been delighted with it but there is a fairly high chance I am going to be made redundant in the next few weeks and presumably I am going to find it harder to sell it with 2 more registered keepers than it actually has.

The excuse from the dealer at the time for the delay was that the previous owner was having trouble with the DVLA as had moved house when he sold the car and hadnt let the DVLA know so was having problems getting his private plate re-registered and had to try several times blah blah blah...

Anyway. If you got this far thanks for reading

Gary C

Humm,

Is the previous owner down on the V5 as the last registered keeper ?, if so contact them and find out if they were the 5th owner or the 3rd, then take it up with the dealer.

If the last registered owner has somehow got put down as the dealer during the reg transfer, then I think that will be difficult to unpick, but not the end of the world.

W R X

Yeah the last owner is down as the registered keeper and the "aquired on" date ties up with all the paperwork. The dealership has apparently changed ownership and they are unable to help. I have written to the previous owner and asked the question but havent heard anything back.

Do you know if its possible to pay the DVLA an admin charge and get a list of names of all registered keepers of a vehicle? Maybe to sort out the probs with the DVLA and get a new V5 he had to re register as his old man or something. God knows!

Im probably gettting worked up over nothing really, I just dont want the extra hassle when trying to sell it of explaining away two phantom keepers.

Anyway, thanks for responding

Steve001

iTrader: (7)

take it up with the hpi people, i had one done a few year back and there was all sorts of cover (if the hpi got the details wrong) also if you cant get it sorted look to get something back from the dealer