False Registration – Again
Posted: Sat 30 November, 2024 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving 3 Comments »Back in 2022 (so before I moved) I received a car’s V5C registration document that wasn’t for me – not in my name, and not a vehicle I’d every owned, or even seen. It also wasn’t a name I knew, and not a plate I recognised.
It turned out that this is a known scam, where the owner of the vehicle is basically going to try not paying for parking/speeding fines and fees. It’s odd, because it relies on people being useless and just throwing the V5C away – which is *not* a good plan.
Instead, take a copy of the V5C (either a scan, or photos will be fine) and then return the V5C to DVLA – their contact details are here – with a covering note explaining that the person and vehicle mentioned have never lived here and that the vehicle doesn’t belong here. Send that ASAP.
Anyway, a few weeks back, the same happened again – a different name and registration, but the same scam. So I did the same again, scanned it and sent it back with the covering letter.
And a week later I started getting parking penalty notices – all in the name of the V5C person, and relating to that vehicle. I’ve returned a couple, and kept a couple – because at some point I’m sure it’s going to end up with a visit.
Thankfully, this week I got the confirmation letter back from DVLA that they’ve accepted that the registration is flawed/faked, and they’ve taken my address off the record for that vehicle. (I’m keeping that letter safe, obviously!)
I don’t know if the parking penalty people will re-check for reigstered addresses etc., so I’m still sort-of expecting a knock on the door. But I’ve got all the defenses I can think of on that score, so at least it’ll be interesting!
Given that to buy any new or used car from a dealer requires a driving licence and NINO these days, this can only be as a result of private (probably cash) sales.
Moral of the tale would seem to be that were one to sell a car privately, one should insist on proof of address in the form of a driving licence.
Makes part exchanges look much more interesting too – avoid the potential pitfalls of a private sale.
*so far* I’ve never been asked for NI Number as part of car purchase.
But the ID check at the dealer isn’t then passed on in the V5C, so it’s (as I understand/imagine it) comparatively easy to still buy a vehicle legitimately and then register it on the V5C at a completely different address.
Similarly, I *could* (again, in theory etc. etc.) move my registration/V5C to somewhere else, even with maintaining my own address – that’s probably the easiest of all.
My 2 experiences of car sales in the past 4 weeks (and 6 others of just test drives in the past 6 months) were that you now need DL + NINO to test drive a car, and they check your home address through your NINO. They won’t let you take a car out for a test drive without your NINO address exactly matching to your driving licence address.
And, yesterday, the admin department’s tick box checklist that the salesman had at handover had 2 boxes, one below the other, saying ‘Address/NINO checked’ ‘Address ……………. to V5C’. The dealer fills in the V5C details (in front of you) from his ticky sheet onto the DVLA website, and (if you want to provide an email address) you get an immediate email from DVLA confirming the vehicle is correctly registered to you.
It pays to have finely tuned skills in reading upside down or sideways from years of working with people who’d prefer not to disclose all their info but are stupid enough to leave sheets on desks or their laps while talking to me!
Given that I didn’t move my DL and HMRC details at the same time due to our extended move time and playing about with residence addresses, I could have been in a position of not being able to buy a car at all when need necessitated.
I don’t know what checks DVLA do when changing the address on a V5C, but they do potentially have access to a wealth of government database info so one would think that they would do some due diligence to prevent the sort of scam you describe.
It’s easy to see how people get away with scams when the government’s own departments are apparently so lax!