Check a car, tax it, insure...where to start?!
Choosing your car is the easy part. But what else can you do and should you do for your new car?
Well here at Shields Motor Company we want to make your life as easy as possible, so here's some useful links to help you before you buy your car, or to use once you've made your purchase. Just press the image and you'll go to the relevant page.
Check a cars history
We buy our cars in the trade, predominately from the main dealer network, and as such we check our cars against what is referred to as the HPi register. This means we have a check that tells us if the car is registered as stolen or wanted by the Police. If it has been subject to an insurance total loss, or if it has outstanding finance. Whether or not the mileage verifies as genuine. Is the VRM (registration) a match to the car, and do the numbers on the engine and VIN (vehicle identification number) tally up. You can do this too, and we recommend mycarcheck.com.
Check the mileage and MOT history
All our retail cars have warranted mileages. It's a well kept trade secret that the service book is just part of that, what you really want is to see what the government holds, and this is referred to as the VOSA history, so basically every time a car changes hands the mileage should be logged, and if it is, then a marker is held by VOSA. This is your truest way to check a car's mileage. We use this in partnership with the MOT history and service history to confirm a car's story. So can you. Visit the following and you can check your chosen car's MOT history prior to viewing. You can see all advisories, any fails etc, and then you can rest assured that we have checked them in our pre sales inspection. Many traders don't; but we do!
Tax a car
Its a cost of motoring for most cars, and certainly all of the cars we sell. Tax is not included, and any unexpired excise reverts back to the previous keeper, so as of Oct 2014 you have to tax your car. But it couldn't be easier. Do it on line, pay by direct debit, pay 6 or 12 monthly. It's all very simple these days.
Insurance
We would suggest that you use one of the price comparison websites, we have no affiliation to any, nor do we make a personal recommendation so we'd suggest you run a google search.
Car finance
We don't offer finance. After many years of offering this service it became too expensive for a small business to meet the stringent and ever changing criteria. In our experience the high street banks are often the best bet for personal loans up to about £20,000.