Cheapest Multiple HPi Checks

[hal3210]

About a quarter of the cars I've bought at auction have come up as having mileage discrepancies or outstanding finance when I've HPi checked them afterwards. Although the mileage discrepancies were input errors and the finance was in the process of being settled, it caused a fair bit of stress and delay sorting it out and one car in particular with a daft discrepancy (something like 850,000 miles instead of 85,000 miles) never got removed from the mileage discrepancy database, despite several long letters and service history/Mot histories sent to HPi.

So recently I've started HPi checking cars I'm interested in at auction before bidding on them. Although this might sound a bit overcautious and expensive it gives me far more confidence to bid when I know everything is clear with HPi. Only last week a 29,000 warranted miles BMW had a mileage discrepancy - OK, it was probably an error but an absolute nightmare to sort out and it would make anyone question the mileage - which was the main selling point of the car!

I've been carrying out 3 checks through eBay which come directly from HPi for £16.99 but are there any cheaper options which genuinely get their info from HPi? The only snag with eBay's checks are that if the mileage shows a discrepancy I'd then have to do a full check to get the actual details of the discrepancy.

I'd greatly appreciate details of any cheaper checks. I am pretty sure that the auction houses use Experian rather than HPi so sometimes the car could be fine on Experian but not HPi!

[V8RX7]

Depends how many you do.

A trade account with HPI is cheap per check (IIRC around £3.50) BUT there are costs to set up and maintain the account so it's only worth having if you're checking a lot of cars.

[hal3210]

Many thanks for the reply, do you know roughly how much the annual subscription with HPi is? I'm not checking that many cars so eBay checks aren't too bad as they work out at £5.66 each, so I'd have to be checking 100s to make it worth paying a subscription to save about £2 a check. Back in the 90s I remember it was about £200 a year to subscribe to HPi.

[V8RX7]

Sorry I can't remember I looked into it for my Dad a year or so ago.

I think it was around £100 to join and £15 / month PLUS the checks.

The RAC sell 3 genuine HPi checks for around £20

Which Ebay ad are you using ?