Irish car vs. UK car (slight rant)

Captain Slow IRL

The OH crashed her car (Irish from new) last year and it ended up as an uneconomical write-off. She got her payment from the insurance and got on with things. The car, in the meantime, was sitting in a garage yard not far from home and we saw it frequently. A couple of weeks ago, it disappeared, and I'd assumed it went off to the breakers for dismantling. Then earlier on this week, she pulled up in a local car-park and her old, written-off, car was parked a few spots down from her. It was dark at the time, and she didn't see the extent of the repair work but it looked decent enough - the car had been rolled and nearly every panel had sustained damage.

I was messing about with www.mywheels.ie this week and the car is showing up as a green light with "Good" proclaimed about it - no mention of being written off.

Checking out my own car, which I imported from the UK, and I get an amber light with "Caution" and import highlighted. WTF?!

It's a bit of a ****ty situation that we can't get something like this more accurate or unbiased - but I hope anyone who reads this and purchases a car on the basis of the information from mywheels or cartell does a bit more homework and checks the car out properly.

sleepysniper

I see what you mean, although considering mywheels.ie is a free website to use I wouldn't imagine it being terribly reliable anyway and I wouldn't use it soley to research a used car.

Captain Slow IRL

Given that it's a free website, it'll probably get a lot more use than cartell - I wonder if their information sources are the same?

L1011

Their data sources are identical - the NVDF, and the insurance databases, databases which the company behind mywheels actually run.

Captain Slow IRL

MYOB wrote: »

Their data sources are identical - the NVDF, and the insurance databases, databases which the company behind mywheels actually run.

Can Joe Public access these?

JHMEG

If the car is still on the road then it hasn't been written off, so mywheels is correct.

They chose to highlight imported cars. They didn't have to but I would imagine they did as there are a huge amount of German cars coming in from the UK, and anecdotally a lot seem to be receiving haircuts on the way.

Neilw

JHMEG wrote: »

If the car is still on the road then it hasn't been written off, so mywheels is correct.

But if an insurance company wrote the car off and paid out should the report not reflect this, like cat D in the UK?
The insurance database should see a total loss against the reg of the car, or am I wrong here?

JHMEG

Neilw wrote: »

But if an insurance company wrote the car off and paid out should the report not reflect this, like cat D in the UK?
The insurance database should see a total loss against the reg of the car, or am I wrong here?

No, it was an economic write-off for the insurance company. Mywheels etc do not link into the insurance companies, so won't have that information.

An economic write-off does not mean it was permanently put off the road. They will have permanent write-off information which comes from Shannon.

mickdw

There is nothing at all wrong with buying a car that was an ecomonical write off. I would however like to know that it was damaged and the price should reflect this so it is pretty poor that these history check sites dont seem to record this.

Pedro K

Should still show that the car was previously beyond economical repair.

If in the future the car was in an accident again, the insurance companies concerned would no doubt find out that it was previous B.E.R. and knock a chunk of the pre accident value off for the unclucky driver.

JHMEG

As far as I know it's the insurance companies who won't provide the information to the websites. It's probably related to the Data Protection Act.

Captain Slow IRL

JHMEG wrote: »

If the car is still on the road then it hasn't been written off, so mywheels is correct.

They chose to highlight imported cars. They didn't have to but I would imagine they did as there are a huge amount of German cars coming in from the UK, and anecdotally a lot seem to be receiving haircuts on the way.

Why do they call it a write-off and then exclude it as a certain type of write-off?! Mywheels also give info about "scrapped cars" - am I to understand that scrapped cars were voluntarily taken off the road as opposed to crashed cars?
I know it's been said a hundred times before, but it's not as if the Irish don't know how to clock cars!

Pedro K wrote: »

Should still show that the car was previously beyond economical repair...........

+1.

Neilw

mickdw wrote: »

There is nothing at all wrong with buying a car that was an ecomonical write off. I would however like to know that it was damaged and the price should reflect this so it is pretty poor that these history check sites dont seem to record this.

I agree, nothing wrong with buying a damaged car but there should be some way this is flagged to a future buyer, like cat D in the UK.

robbie99

JHMEG wrote: »

They didn't have to but I would imagine they did as there are a huge amount of German cars coming in from the UK, and anecdotally a lot seem to be receiving haircuts on the way.

That line of 'anecdotal' edvidence must be coming from vested interests because it is actually possible to verify mileage of UK cars and the AA and cartell have done surveys on this in the past. It is not illegal to clock 'Irish' cars and without a National Mileage Register here you can't check if your Irish car has been clocked.

In fact, anecdotally, clocking of Irish cars is more prevalent than for UK cars.

Maybe Irish cars should have the "Caution".

pow wow

My old car was a UK import and got the green flag, no mention of its former life in the UK...

SpannerMonkey

My wheels is not accurate I bought a car a few weeks back and I did checks with cartell and mywheels and mywheels was way off the mark very inAccurate website only good for a rough idea

smash

mywheels reports this car as having nothing wrong with it... http://www.carzone.ie/search/Volkswagen/Golf/3.2-R32-/200936195075145/advert?channel=CARS

The thing is, I know the car and it was previously a write off!

ninty9er

And I know that the garage is correct in marking this as a3 owner car

http://www.carzone.ie/search/Citroen/Xsara/1.4-Hatc/200925194374460/advert?channel=CARS

Though checking the status of some of our old cars it would seem there are an awful lot of unscrapped cars sitting rotting in this country.

JHMEG

steve06 wrote: »

mywheels reports this car as having nothing wrong with it... http://www.carzone.ie/search/Volkswagen/Golf/3.2-R32-/200936195075145/advert?channel=CARS

The thing is, I know the car and it was previously a write off!

An economic write-off, as in by the insurance company? Or a total write-off as in it was destined for the scrap yard?

smash

Front suspension was ripped out, there was a large hole in the sump and crankcase, front bumper, wings, grille, alloys were all damaged too. As far as I know, it needed way too much work so was only good for parts!