Advertising Your Used Car Safely

Wednesday, 20. April 2011

I’m actually in a state of shock – ish! Whilst thumbing through the advice pages of Autoexpress I noticed that someone had asked the question, should you blur out the car’s registration number when advertising your car online? Now this is something I’ve had an issue with for sometime. It seems quite obvious that you should blur out the number to me but that wasn’t the advice being given to the questioner by the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service. The spokeswoman said ‘We don’t consider it a necessity. Without information about the address at which the car is located there’s not a lot a criminal can do.’

This was followed by someone equally dopey at Autotrader who reckoned that obscuring the plate made it harder to check the model’s authenticity as they compare details of the ad to the information held at the DVLA. Is it me?

First of all by far the most common crime is simply to create a set of cloned plates for an identical car to the one you are driving then casually fill up with fuel without paying, speed at a ton past as many speed cameras as you feel like without fear of prosecution, park wherever you like oh and don’t bother with tax, insurance or MOT cos the identification cameras that the old bill use to check these details will show that you have the lot.

So why not simply clone a car at the side of the road? Well an advert will tell you how long the MOT has to run as well as whether the car is taxed and a simple check on the Internet will tell you if a car has insurance – simples!

As for Autotrader checking details – ummm how about the form they fill in which says – registration number – duh! My advice is blur your number plate! Or stick something over it like I Luv U Amy and kill two birds with one stone. By Graham Hill