Buying a used car - 10 top tips

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and see what cars of that model and year generally sell for so you don't pay well over the odds.

How do I check something out at an email address?

John.

It's not an email address. It's a username. If you go to say, a passworded FTP or website, you may be given the address in the form of ftp://user: snipped-for-privacy@fileserver.com or http://user: snipped-for-privacy@website.com Occasionally scammers will attempt to trick you into handing over your details using this, with an url like

ofgubbins to stop you looking at the url too snipped-for-privacy@dodgydave.com You actually end up at dodgydave.com, but if they've copied the Barclays website, the average user will never notice.

I have to agree with the last person. Just buy a cheap piece of shit and fix it yourself. No need to worry about all that stuff you mention. Did that with my house and it worked out just fine.

1. Go and view the car in the dark.

1. Don't test drive it, save time by simply asking the seller how it drives.

2. Always meet the seller at a service station and pay cash.

1. Never shag a woman on a top loading washing machine with the lid up.

AndrewR made the world a better place for us by saying..

Do this but you'll get better info if you find an internet discussion forum specific to the car you're looking to buy. You'll get a wealth of info from real owners. (virtually all makes and model have a discussion forum somewhere on the internet).

Routine service is usually just oil and a filter every 3-6kmi for most modern cars and it's pretty cheap. (Unless you have a Ferrari that uses Shell Helix at $50/qt.)

Good idea.

B.S. Extended warranties are usually poor value. Buy a car with a known good reliability record instead.

This isn't a major consideration IMHO.

(ie) get pre-approved for a loan from "your" choice of financial institutions.

And take the car to a mechanic for a thorough inspection unless you're confident you can judge for yourself.

Whatever.

OK, but get a Carfax report too.

Smooth???

or

Yeah, the only thing I'd really worry about is the timing belt, on cars so equipped. If it hasn't been done, and will need it soon, it can be a significant expense.

I never really got the "service history" thing, either. I mean, I'm not going to save all my damn oil-change receipts just so I can show them at selling time. If you think I'm so damn stupid that I don't change my oil, tough, I'll sell the car to someone else.

Some family members in the insurance business would certainly underscore that recommendation. The cost of insuring seemingly comparable cars can vary by a surprising amount. It hurts nothing to ask -- some insurance companies even publish a consumer guide to which cars are relatively more or less expensive to insure.

ALWAYS take somebody along and/or take the car to a third-party mechanic. You're paying for objectivity as much as expertise -- after all, by the time you've gotten this far, you are at least beginning to want the car. A message like "Don't buy this thing unless somebody you think is *really* cute works at the auto parts store" is sometimes just what you need to hear, even -- no, especially -- if it isn't what you WANT to hear.

A $50 professional going-over can be a superb investment; even if the overall verdict is that you should buy the car, you get a road map of what to look out for and when.

At least in the US, you can also run the Vehicle Identification Number through various Web services for a small (single digits) fee, and learn or at least get an educated guess whether it's been crashed hard, has had a salvage title, has fleet or taxicab service in its background, etc.

By educating yourself in this fashion, you are deciding not only whether it is intrinsically a good car, but also whether it is a good value (and perhaps putting yourself in a stronger position to negotiate the price and terms). Information is your friend -- and Car Lust is your enemy.

Cheers,

--Joe

I knew that that was possible, but the OP would have made it a lot clearer if they'd used snipped-for-privacy@www.domain.com or http:// snipped-for-privacy@domain.com... John.

TO: "Pete M"

Well Pete....you said it all... No use for me just repeating your reply.... I'm in total agreement

Bob Griffiths .

Yep. Of course, he could just give us the proper url of his website, as ISTR that clicktopromote.com is some sort ad redirection service, whereby visitors to your site see their ads before they get to it, and you get a %age cut.

A lot of it isn't whether there's a big pile of receipts, but whether the seller's word seems to be trustworthy, and whether the seller comes across as someone who doesn't look after a car properly. And FWIW there are plenty of those.

Peter

|\ _,,,---,,_ Tigress /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_

|,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-' snipped-for-privacy@gtf.org '---''(_/--' `-'\_) Cat by Felix Lee. Looks like a cousin to Richard Kilpatrick's Morticia, although slightly less distorted.

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." (WilliamPitt, 1783)

If you do the service yourself, staple the receipts for the consumables in the service book. You can then show these to a prospective buyer. Ok, it doesn't prove that the work was actually done, but it's better than nothing.

Well all a whole load of receipts really proves is that oil and filters (and other service items) were purchased. To really prove it you'd need some form of photo diary, but even then that could be faked. You could get a picture of you draining the oil, taking the old filter off, taking the new one out of the box, etc etc..., and even then you could change clothes and take the same pictures again, claiming it to be a few months down the line!!!

Peter

No, it isn't better than nothing. Nothing means that an examination of the car turns up evidence of lack of maintenance. Because the only other thing an examination can turn up is evidence OF maintenance. There is no such thing as examining a car and NOT being able to tell whether it was maintained properly, mostly correctly, somewhat or not at all.

I'll take my own eyes ability to determine what condition a car is in over some paper that means nothing.

This is all very well, but 99.9% of the car buying public aren't expert enough to check a car in this way (most of them can only just about work out where to put the petrol in).

Whilst there's little doubt that a proficient home mechanic can service the car at least as well as any dealership, that'll never provide proof that the car's been serviced.

And dealer servicing is not all doom and gloom. Yes, everyone's got a dealer servicing horror story but main dealers service thousands of cars every day in this country and most of it is acceptable. Admittedly, many dealer mechanics aren't that great, but fortunately basic servicing isn't so difficult that most can't do it adequately.

The other benefit of having the car serviced by a dealer is that some tasks can't be done at home - nowadays you can't even change the idle speed on most cars without hooking it up to the computer. Also, when servicing the car the dealer will (in theory at least) make sure your car gets the latest software upgrades etc.

Even if all dealer servicing was utter crap (and yes, poor quality work gets done every day - not just at main dealers), when it comes to selling your car most buyers want to see a service history stamped up by a garage simply because it's an independently verifiable document that proves the car's been serviced.

Without a history, you can tell a customer until you're blue in the face that dealer servicing is crap and that any engineer would find the car to be in A1 condition, but they'll be walking away before you even finish your sentence.

Which is why I'd never buy a car to retail without a service history - even if it was mint; it's just too hard to sell to an inexpert and suspicious public.