The value of a cartell.ie report...

Sleepy

€35 to find out that the car I was going to be picking up on Thursday has been clocked. Money well spent.

To be fair, the dealer seemed fairly upset about it so wouldn't cast allegations against him but still, glad I spent the €35!

CountingCrows

OP - got a link to the car in question?
Always interested to see if there's any tell tale signs of clocking.

budhabob

how does cartell work? and how does a buyer get caught with the previous finance issues? I've read bits and pieces bout it, and i see its importance, i'm just not fully up to speed on the topic. any info would be much appreciated.

Sleepy

http://www.longmilemotors.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=car&carID=200923192989361

mickdw

Id say with a car of that age, if its had a few owners, its going to be clocked at some stage. Sad but its way too common here.

Gregor Samsa

One thing though, as far as I understand it, for original Irish registered cars, Cartell just gets it's mileage records from people entering it when looking up a car - not from any official database. They call it the "National Mileage Register", but that's just their name for their database to make it sound official. So the mileage is not necessarily verified, and I wouldn't count on it solely to determine that a car had been clocked (or not).

I was checking out a few cars recently, and in the process of getting the report, I was asked if I wanted to enter the mileage for the cars in question. I could have entered anything.

The NCT does keep mileage records on all cars tested, but they won't release them for third party use.

For UK registerd cars, (or I assume, cars previously registerd in the UK), they can check the offical UK records, which is fair enough.

Mr Benevolent

JoePublic wrote: »

how drastically had the car been clocked? thousands or tens of thousands? is the dealer going to correct the mileage on it?

The clocked mileage gives just over 10,000 miles per year, which just doesn't seem right. My brother's Bora is the same age and had 172,000 miles when he bought it a year ago. So it's safe to say it's been underclocked by 30 - 40,000 miles.

Sleepy

Dealer was just on to me there with a similar line phutyle. He's contacted CarTell, the NCT crowd and the original owner to ask them to verify the mileage. Presumably they can issue this to him as he's currently the legal owner of the car?

Mileage listed is 108k and he tells me he's adjusted it on carzone now. The CarTell report shows a record of 130k for the car in 2007.The car would have been mid-way through it's ownership at the time the car showed the different mileage in the Cartell database and he has a service record of the belt and water pump being done at 90,000 since the odd mileage report. Could it be a case of Cartell having the mileage in kilometres for this record rather than miles?

darc

Its good to see the dealer take it seriously - fair play to them and it would give me confidence to buy from them.

Nforce

Don't rely too heavily on Cartell. A very good friend of mine had the full Cartell check (€300+) done on a 530d that he was thinking of buying earlier this year. The check came back clean so my mate bought the car.
A few weeks after buying it the car was suffering some minor electrical issues so he brought it to me to run a diagnostic check. On doing so I noticed that the cars vin# didn't match the number in the ecu. Turns out that the car had been cloned and had been sold as part of a large stolen car ring.
Result?...my mate had the car confiscated by the Gardai and is now down €20+ grand.

Sleepy

Confab wrote: »

The clocked mileage gives just over 10,000 miles per year, which just doesn't seem right. My brother's Bora is the same age and had 172,000 miles when he bought it a year ago. So it's safe to say it's been underclocked by 30 - 40,000 miles.

Funnily enough, I'm actually driving the exact same model and year at the moment which has similar mileage. The one I'm driving at the moment is on loan and I've the option to buy it but it's not as clean inside or out and the owner's looking for 3k for it...

I've told the dealer that if he can get me something from the NCT at that time which shows what he's sure is the correct mileage (i.e. what the clock shows) I'm still happy to take the car off him.

Like darc says, the dealer's taken it seriously and I have to say I'm strangely actually feeling more confident about the car than I was prior to this...

Sleepy

Mental. Just got a call back from the dealer there. He's gotten a copy of the car's previous NCT cert which post-dates the record cartell.ie have of this 130k mileage reading and it has a mileage reading in-line with what's on the odomoter and service history.

Now, I may be making the mother of all assumptions here but given the car's history it seems highly unlikely to me that someone would clock their car a year and a half into a 3 1/2 year ownership of that car.

The girl I spoke to from cartell couldn't tell me the source of this mileage figure they had for the car. How the hell can cartell sell you information when they can't stand over it? It seems that any time you enter a mileage figure for a car with them, they take it as the gospel reading for a car. Provides an awful easy way to screw someone over if you know they're trying to sell a car tbh.

Picking up the car on Thursday and while I'll be sure to look over the service history and investigate the NCT cert the dealer picked up today, I'll be looking for my cash back from cartell!

Mr Benevolent

Very interesting Sleepy, makes me very very thoughtful about Cartell. They're a private company after all... if they get the mileage from anyone punching in the numbers then it's not a lot of good. Much obliged for your story and I'm glad you got a good resolution and were able to trust the dealer in the end.

Maybe you did get to see the value of Cartell after all!

BigZack

I agree. Taking mileage readings from Joe public is a very dangerous way to build a database. Accusing a dealer of clocking a car is no laughing matter. The consumer association take it very seriously and with dealers going bust up and down the country I'm sure it's all this guy needed.

I know that Motorcheck only take readings from the INMR (Their national mileage register). As far as I know they don't accept readings from the general public, only impartial third parties.

I hope you asked for a refund on your cartell report!

L1011

Motorcheck's owners operate a large 'virtual fleet' for the purposes of letting people who don't have an actual fleet get a Topaz fleet fuel card as if they did - I sincerely hope they don't log the mileage from this in to the INMR as I've had all sorts of random ones put down on my card by service station staff.

BigZack

Interesting! Have you tried looking up the reg?

Santa Claus

BigZack wrote: »

I agree. Taking mileage readings from Joe public is a very dangerous way to build a database. Accusing a dealer of clocking a car is no laughing matter. The consumer association take it very seriously and with dealers going bust up and down the country I'm sure it's all this guy needed.

I know that Motorcheck only take readings from the INMR (Their national mileage register). As far as I know they don't accept readings from the general public, only impartial third parties.

Taken from the INMR website:

Describing the primary objective of the database, Rochford said “THe INMR has been established in an effort to protect a vehicle retailer from inadvertently misleading a consumer regarding a vehicle’s usage. Users will be able to verify the odometer reading of a used car (as recorded by the previous owner) and record his / her own reading before purchasing or selling it on to a third party. Keeping a record in this way creates an verifiable audit trail of the vehicles history and limits the opportunity for ‘clocking’ throughout its second hand life”.


Sounds to me like it'll be the car trade who'll be inputting the mileage, which for the more unscrupulous dealers is their dream situation !

Sleepy

BigZack wrote: »

I hope you asked for a refund on your cartell report!

I will be doing so once I get the proof that their mileage record is inaccurate...

Can't get past the irrationality of developing a database and not leaving some trace record to indicate the data's source. Incredible lack of knowledge of data management.

stratos

I have bought a lot of secondhand cars over the years, I would always treat the likes of cartell in this country with a pinch of salt. We don't have the infrastructure here for this sort of thing. It's like those huge expensive digital signs on the M1, just there to make us look sophisticated, but not really connected to anything.

I always tend do just buy a car on what I see, and listen to nothing the salesman says he should be completly irrelevant to your decision, except on the price. I think sometimes some people think they are buying new cars when buying cheap secondhand cars.

I have bought some cheap cars with obvious problems (one had a door from a different trim level vehicle on one side ) but the price was right and needs must when the devil drives. Whats on the oddometer is not particularily relevant after 100,000 miles. Buying secondhand cars is always a gamble try to stack the odds in your favour.

I always go into a deal on the worst case assumption that if the car goes wrong the dealer will tell me to go jump( he has your money and it's hard for you to force him to do anything in the real world ), that focuses your mind, on the older stuff I reckon the 3 month warranty is not worth anything. I usually forgoe it for a discount.

Off topic a bit I viewed one car and when I turned up it was dirty not filthy but not cleaned either, this struck me as odd who sells a car below it's best. Turned out a wipe with cloth showed very badly scratched paintwork. Another guy had the heater up on full blast during the test drive it was a summers day. When I turned it off the car overheated. I bought this one however it was just a jammed engine thermostat negotiated a good discount. However my biggest walk away is a car that has its engine warmed up when I arrive there is always some excuse..... walk away.

Henry Ford III

Nforce wrote: »

Don't rely too heavily on Cartell. A very good friend of mine had the full Cartell check (€300+) done on a 530d that he was thinking of buying earlier this year. The check came back clean so my mate bought the car.
A few weeks after buying it the car was suffering some minor electrical issues so he brought it to me to run a diagnostic check. On doing so I noticed that the cars vin# didn't match the number in the ecu. Turns out that the car had been cloned and had been sold as part of a large stolen car ring.
Result?...my mate had the car confiscated by the Gardai and is now down €20+ grand.

That's scandalous.

xt40

i think it was a waste of 35 euro to check out a 2500 10 year old car.
at that age, it wouldnt be on finance and how it clean it looks and how it drives are all you should be concerned about. whether or not it has been clocked or even crashed and repaired is irrelevant at that point.

BigZack

Yeah. But if a genuine dealer has already put a reading in, what can they do? They wont want to be the ones identified as the clocker.

Nforce

Henry Ford III wrote: »

That's scandalous.

Yep....it was a very professional outfit that stole the car. They even had a copy of the vehicle registration certificate for the car! Vin numbers on the strut and windscreen were changed too.
I can't go into too much detail as there's an ongoing Garda investigation. One thing that I'd recommend for anyone buying an expensive car privately is to get a main dealer to run a check on it before purchase and ask them to verify the vin numbers through a diagnostic check.

Sleepy

xt40 wrote: »

i think it was a waste of 35 euro to check out a 2500 10 year old car.
at that age, it wouldnt be on finance and how it clean it looks and how it drives are all you should be concerned about. whether or not it has been clocked or even crashed and repaired is irrelevant at that point.

When it's a car change that you can't afford but are forced into by a jeep totalling your car, you have to be as cautious as you can because if this car starts to fall apart in 3 months, I've no idea how I'll afford another.

Two and a half grand ain't a lot of money but when you've taken a 20% hit on your salary and are stretched badly, there's not a lot of room for error...

Henry Ford III

Nforce wrote: »

Yep....it was a very professional outfit that stole the car. They even had a copy of the vehicle registration certificate for the car! Vin numbers on the strut and windscreen were changed too.
I can't go into too much detail as there's an ongoing Garda investigation. One thing that I'd recommend for anyone buying an expensive car privately is to get a main dealer to run a check on it before purchase and ask them to verify the vin numbers through a diagnostic check.

It also highlights one of Cartell's biggest shortcomings compared to HPI. No warranty if the report is factually innaccurate.

Sleepy

HPI?

Theta

I thought milage was now recorded at the NCT and added to a national database??

r3nu4l

Henry Ford III wrote: »

It also highlights one of Cartell's biggest shortcomings compared to HPI. No warranty if the report is factually innaccurate.

Sleepy wrote: »

HPI?

HPI is badly flawed too, don't rely on that chaps!
See here for more.

smash

Sleepy wrote: »

The girl I spoke to from cartell couldn't tell me the source of this mileage figure they had for the car.

A friend got a report from HPI before and the car had 17,000 on it - he accidentally typed in 71,000 and got his report. When he went back to get a 2nd report and typed in 17,000 he got a message saying it had altered mileage and that the previously recorded mileage was 71,000.... He called HPI and got it sorted but maybe cartell take previously entered mileage on report requests too, so maybe someone type in KM instead of miles on a previous report.

Sleepy

irlmarc wrote: »

I thought milage was now recorded at the NCT and added to a national database??

If that's happening, cartell ain't using that database or are suplementing it with something else. Haven't seen the cert myself yet but the dealer has the previous NCT cert with the correct mileage on it.

Scarlett68

I did a Cartell check today on a car that I was very interested in buying.....it was marketed as an "irish" car which is what drew me to it. Anyway the report informed me it was not an Irish car but it was a Japanese import that spent 2 years in Japan, and was then imported to the UK where it spent 4 years before finally making its way here. All in all it has had 6 owners but the dealer lead me to believe it only had 2. I have walked away from pursuing the car. So I dont know about the mileage issue but Cartell has proved most useful in this circumstance

I dont know if the dealer is aware of the situation.....should I be telling him??