Inaccurate HPI data on Gumtree - beware.

[moffspeed]

As designated secondhand car buyer within my family / circle of friends my latest assignment has been to find a reliable relatively low miles well-specced medium hatchback with a budget of £5K or thereabouts for a friend of my wife's.

I'm prepared to do the miles so there are plenty of Focus/Golf etc options on Autotrader but too many are high mileage or Cat positive. So over to Gumtree which seems to be a bit of a go-to choice for "private" (so-called perhaps) sellers these days.

There it was. A nice 2012 Focus - petrol, manual, Ffsh, one lady owner, good spec with satnav and a new set of premium tyres. MOT history clean throughout with a steady progression of just about 8K miles p.a. The ad. was well constructed and worded with good quality photos (ie not 3rd car back on the drive, covered in snow). Owner sounded very straightforward whilst the "HPI vehicle history" box announced that it was clean.

So on the job list today was to drive 30 miles or so to view it. Until the cautious side of me took over - I did my own HPI check and unearthed the fact that it was Cat N last November....

So, as ever, proceed with caution and do your own research.

[Sir Bagalot]

Did they list it using a different reg to get the clean HPI?

As you say DYOR

[moffspeed]

...same reg. I've never advertised on Gumtree so have no idea as to whether the "HPI clear " box is no more than a self-declaration.

Interestingly when I "lifted" the Focus details and began composing an imaginary advert for the car on Autotrader it immediately labelled it as Cat N with no facility to obscure this fact - so fair play to them.

[AW10]

Had a similar experience on a car that looked fine on Gumtree but turned out to be Cat D.

Have tried to create a for sale advert on Gumtree for that Cat D car and even after entering the reg number nothing is flagged up nor is there even a check box for HPI status where I self-certify the car’s status.

And just tried to create a Gumtree ad for a known Cat C car (a Citroen C4 Picasso, CE13FSO) and nothing is flagged up either. So their HPI statement is pretty worthless and their free check checks just what?!?!

You can do a free initial check on Autotrader by trying to create a for sale listing - put in the reg and mileage and will tell you is the car has ever been written off.

[M4cruiser]

Confirms to me why I've always been suspicious of GumTree.

For me the list of places I try, from best to worst:-

-Franchised Dealers
-Independent Used Car Dealers (with a "site")
-AutoTrader.co.uk (which includes the above 2 and the 3 below)
-Private Sales
-Car Supermarkets
-Independent Used car sellers (with no "site", i.e. "view by appointment only")
-eBay
-GumTree