As far as I know, posting live ebay listings isn't against the rules.

I found this on ebay earlier today. With used car prices as they are these days, £1950 seems cheap with only 70k miles on the clock. It looks tidy from the photos, with no obvious major damage.

It's not mine, and I have no connection with the seller. The post is for discussion reasons only.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/373958829274

 

 

Parkers says £1120 - £1975 for a private sale.  However, that is indeed with 140k miles rather than the 70k.  

BUT assuming I've read the ad correctly, it's been a "structural" write-off. (Cat S) 

... or a non-structural write-off (Cat N). I obviously didn't read the ad correctly and I replied too quickly!

Either way, it has been an insurance write-off - hence "Advisory" against the Cat N/S check.

It's a cat D...so was written off a while ago!

There's also something odd about the plate.  It's definitely not original.  May simply have had a private plate and this one assigned after that was removed, but there may be more to it...

The MOT history is also very interesting...  Covered very few miles over 3 years, then followed by this advisory...which suggests the odo was probably broken, and it's considerably higher mileage than currently stated.

• Front mileage meter changed, mileage as shown. will inform when as corrected.

Good investigation, Tom.

Cat D is supposed to be relatively minor damage, I believe, but still enough to write off a £3000 (?) car.

There's too many red flags there for my liking.

Thanks for the replies.

The Parkers price seems low compared to the current asking prices online.

Is there any way to check car write-off details for free? As far as I know there isn't.

I see that the ebay advert says that the plate is not original. Is there anything about the registration number itself that looks suspect? I would be interested to know that for possible future reference.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, alanfp said:

Good investigation, Tom.

Cat D is supposed to be relatively minor damage, I believe, but still enough to write off a £3000 (?) car.

There's too many red flags there for my liking.

I've bought a few cat D's for parts in the past.  Sometimes it can just be a minor scrape on a car over 10 years old, others the entire rear quarter was caved in!  Trouble is, there was no way to tell whether the damage was structural or not, hence the change to the new N & S categories from around 2017.

As we don't know exactly when the car was written off, we can't really guess what it's book value was at the time.  

I totally agree on the red flags though...my Golf is a cat N, but I wouldn't touch that Focus with a barge pole!

 

21 minutes ago, AntonovAN12 said:

Thanks for the replies.

The Parkers price seems low compared to the current asking prices online.

Is there any way to check car write-off details for free? As far as I know there isn't.

I see that the ebay advert says that the plate is not original. Is there anything about the registration number itself that looks suspect? I would be interested to know that for possible future reference.

If you try to value a car on Cazoo, you get an immediate warning stating that the cat was a write off and that they are unable to buy it.  Doesn't state what category it is though, need to be a bit more sneaky for that lol.

The plate itself is fine, but it doesn't bring up all the information I'd expect when doing a data check and doesn't show on ETIS either.