well done and cheers for bringing this to light, tell me something, are these unrecorded cars being bought by bodyshops/repairers who then sell them to the general public without disclosure or then sold to unsuspecting traders/dealers who unknowingly sell them to the public or is deeper with collusion between repairers and dealers not disclosing things, I thought a dealer/trader had a duty to disclose such things, or am I wrong
We have evidence of traders/dealers who post cars on sale within 2 weeks of salvage auction. Sometimes on the day car is won on Copart or such site, trader posts advert online with "coming soon" image. You would expect they are doing valet or something but the story is completely different.
The reason for this quick action is many cars do get updated on MIAFTR as AutoExpress explained, but with many months delay, so traders try to beat this time and make the profit. By the time you realize 1-2 years later when you want to sell it that it is actually writeoff, the trader may not exists anymore.
Then you get the different type of cars classified as "USED UNRECORDED" which range from mechanical issues via flood damage to full front impact accidents but for many reasons people did not have fully comp policy or it was a fleet car and they get put on salvage auction. In those cases there is nothing wrong with being HPI Clear as nobody ever claimed on them, still, they were badly damaged and new owners should know.
The most extreme case was a conversation with the seller when asked if the car was in an accident, the reply was "Yes it is HPI Clear", then he was asked again if any accidents, and explained nobody asked of HPI status. In reply, it was received that "Yes no accidents". Then he was sent a report and he replied back "Oh yes it had an accident, bit not recorded" This is the car below:
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Another type of thing is people misdescribe real damage to cars even which are recorded on HPI:
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I got an endless list of examples, just not enough time in life to post them all, but you get an idea. It is across the board, all types of cars, all locations in UK, all price bands same frauds.