Service History

Pygmie

Is there any way of checking if a service history on a car is legit? If I am buying a car from a dealer, what is stopping the dealer from creating their own service history for the car? Highly illegal I know but is there a way of checking to be sure? Thanks in advance!

kadman

Contact the previous owner.

kadman

Pygmie

What happens if the previous owner can't be contacted (for whatever reason)?

bazz26

Then I would recommend you get a mechanic to give it a look over. They should be able to tell if a car has been regularly maintained or not. Also make sure you get a decent warrenty as a piece of mind.

Pygmie

Cheers for that. I've organised to get someone to check it out. It can cost quite a bit of money to get someone to look at it (the AA for example). Just wondering, if for example, a dealer was to retrospectively fill out a service history on a good car, is there any way (apart from contacting the previous owner) of validating a service history? Maybe garages are obliged to keep a record of services? I doubt it but even if they do, how long are they "obliged" to keep these records for??
I know I'm getting pedantic about his, but what's stopping a garage from buying a car from a local individual who didn't have a service history (for a reduced price) and creating their own service history for the car and selling it on?

Squirrel

Main dealers have to keep a record of the cars they have serviced and what they did during the service, because that is what they pay the mechanic labour from and then there's the tax that you pay when the car is serviced, it has to be recorded

alias no.9

Ideally there should be a stack of receipts with the service history. If not, take a look at the service book, if there is any hand writing on it, look to see that different pens have been used and for different different handwriting. Look at the stamps, the ink should be slightly different colours for each one according to when the ink pad dried out and was refilled. If there's a lot of entries on the service history with the same handwriting, the same pen and the same tone of ink on the stamp, it's likely to have been filled out all at once.

Dilbert75

In Jan we went to look at 2nd hand mini-MPV's in local dealers. One such example was being sold by a main dealer as having FSH performed by their garage, as the previous owner was a friend of the garage owner. When I looked in the book, there were three services stamped in 68k miles, roughly missing every second one. The services carried out were done in a garage 80 miles away. Seller insisted that FSH existed in their garage, until I put him right. Between this and the various scrapes here and there, we didn't buy the car.

Moral of the story: do some investigation before you even speak to the dealer. Confront him with facts.