DH bought a vehicle from a guy who had an auto-spares & repairs business but sold the odd car here & there. It wasn't a run-of-the-mill model so he'd shopped around a lot & travelled 200 miles to get it. He went to view it on a Tuesday, guy showed him MOT, V5 etc & DH telephoned through an AA Car Data Check, it came back clean. Came home that day with photos of it & left the man £100 deposit. Decided the price was reasonable not a bargain by any means but ok & went back down on the Thursday to buy it. Had been looking for months & saw another 2 that day so don't feel he rushed in & everything seemed ok so he bought it.
You've guessed it 5 months later police turned up at our door & impounded it cos it was cloned! £10K down the drain.
AA check is underwritten so we thought we'd be covered but it turns out they don't cover you if car you've bought is cloned. We were not aware of this at the time check done & vehicle purchased. DH was not advised this on the phone it was only when he got all the pack through on the Saturday that the exclusions were mentioned.
Police initially told us Reg & VIN number didn't match but it turned out they were wrong or we would have had a claim.
AA have denied claim & I've accepted that under the actual terms of the policy we have no comeback however I am mad that they sell these policies with all the advertising blurb stating it's the only way to buy a car with peace of mind etc. Is it hell! We lost our money & DH took a terrific knock to his confidence & pride, I'm not exaggerating, he didn't leave the house for 3 days after it happened & he's not the kind of guy who normally lets others opinions bother him. He feels he let me down & that people think he was stupid to be taken in. Police told us it was a really professional job & the seller was jailed as he was part of a big ring.
I am going to write directly to the AA now & not the underwriters to complain as it seems to me if you buy a car from a criminal who is any good at his chosen profession then you've no chance. Okay if you buy from some rubbish one. I want to try & back up my complaint with some figures on percentages of car crime involving cloned vehicles but can't find any on the Net, can anyone get anything? Even regional figures would help as they may give comparison to national average or something.
Part of the reason they declined was that although you have the check done it is still your job to be a prudent buyer but as DH was in the guy's business premises & home. Took photos of him with vehicle which police used as evidence I don't know what else he could have done. All documents were so close to originals the police initially thought DH's car was the correct one & maybe they'd gone to the wrong person.
We've been AA customers for 20 years & I'm completely p'd off. Any ideas for stuff to add weight to my claim gratefully received.
If you're still reading thanks for taking the time. This has gone on for about 2 years & has cast a large shadow, I'd like to draw a line under it but feel I can't get closure till they admit that for a fairly large percentage of people the check isn't worth the paper it's written on.