Irish car buyers missing out on write-off protection

Irish consumers are missing out on protection against write-offs, according to the vehicle history check website www.motorcheck.ie, especially as many are buying used cars in England. Motorcheck claims that as many as 10% of the cars we import from Britain are former write-offs. Now the British magazine and website Auto Trader is going to put a write-off warning on all of its classified adverts.

This is crucial information for anyone thinking of buying a second hand car. Car write offs fall into four distinct categories and Category C and D write-offs can be repaired and legally put back on the road. Categories A and B are much more serious and must be crushed, never again to appear on the road.

The Auto Trader initiative will flag up a warning to anyone viewing an online advert for a car known to be previously written off. The consumer can then make an informed choice and either steer clear or investigate further.

Discovering that a vehicle is a Category C or D write off isn’t necessarily the end of the road for some people. Some brave souls choose to use this information to their advantage to haggle a better deal. The list price of a previous Category C or D write off in Britain is typically marked down by up to 25%.

Once prospective buyers can reassure themselves that repairs were made are to a high standard they have little to fear and could even go one step further to obtain a certificate of roadworthiness from an automotive engineer. There still remains the problem; however, of unscrupulous sellers circumventing the system and trying to sell cars which have had shoddy repairs or worse still should never have been repaired in the first place.

15,000 used cars were imported into Ireland in the first quarter of this year, which means that in and around 1,500 of them were previously written-off. That translates into approximately 4,000-5,000 British write-offs being brought to Ireland every year.

The majority of those will come under Category C and D. These vehicles can be written off simply because the cost of even a relatively minor repair can be in excess of the overall value of the vehicle.

But even a handful of Category A or B write-offs slipping through the net is too many. Entire families could well be putting themselves and other road users at risk because they are driving a car that has previously been so seriously damaged that it was destined for the crusher.