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Hire purchace

slim63

Never surrender
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This little gem may help if you ever get caught out buying a vehicle that the seller still owes HP on

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1964/53/section/27

I got caught out a while ago despite a HPI check & found that quoting section 27 to the finance company allowed me to keep the vehicle with a clean title

What it basically says is if you bought the vehicle in good faith, paid the going rate for a vehicle of that year & condition you are entitled to keep it free & clear.

You will need to prove the above so if you bought a $1000 car from a bloke next door for 20 quid you are stuffed but if you genuinely bought & have a receipt you have a good chance

This last is from my own experience of dealing with one company but others may take a different approach................
..............The finance company may try to tell you that a HPI check is a legal requirement so if you didn't do one its your problem & they own the vehicle until the balance is paid (not true)
They may also threaten to recover the vehicle & police seem to have no power to stop them even if they have no court papers to prove ownership ?
They may also threaten court proceedings to recover the vehicle ( scare tactics because of the cost of going to court)

I hope that helps someone
 

andyBeaker

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Staff member
Moderator
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Many years ago I purchased a Cortina in a private sale and subsequently had an HP company attempt to recover it.

Two things worked in my favour, and fortunately the HP company took a reasonable approach in allowing some time to resolve:

- Having a receipt signed by the seller which included words to the effect that they owned the car and there was no finance or other commitment against it
- the ability to demonstrate I paid a sensible price for the car

But the biggest factor of all was paying a visit to the seller with my brother and 'discussing' the rights and wrongs of the situation. Rather hilariously his Mrs first reaction was to threaten to call Plod. Her second reaction was to ring the finance company and pay his debt off when I said I would be reporting the matter to plod in any event as, while we didn't know much about these things, presumably he had committed an offence of Fraud, Obtaining Pecuniary Advantage ((it was a long time ago!) or similar.

It was my view and remains my view that if a car is bought on finance it should be registered to the finance company; I know there was talk about it at some point but no idea if anything happened?
 

slim63

Never surrender
Club Sponsor
From what I can figure after having to read through most of the hire purchase act

Once 2/3 of the debt is paid the person with who the hire purchase agreement was made with is entitled to sell the vehicle although they still owe the remainder of the debt & should inform the finance company of their intentions, problems seem to arise for the buyer if this is not done

From my experience the finance company will try every option to recover the debt or vehicle from the new buyer despite the above quoted section 27 , police will assist them in this & quote "it belongs to the finance company until the debt is settled" obviously this isn't true in the case of a genuine buyer

In my case the value was relatively small & the company backed down fairly quickly, I would expect more of a fight on a higher value vehicle, it did take months for them to send conformation that they had no interest in my vehicle

I do wonder how many people have handed over a vehicle without a fight though
 

andyBeaker

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Staff member
Moderator
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There is a principle in law that a seller cannot hand on a better title than that which they have. Hence stolen property can be recovered from a new owner.

Unless anything has changed, the problem is that the buyer has no obvious way of knowing if the car is owned by someone else. An Hpi check should cover you as A) it 'should' reveal if there is finance outstanding or b) if there is finance that is not revealed hpi 'should' cover any losses.

Should 8rfl@
 

slim63

Never surrender
Club Sponsor
Andy

Did you read through the hire purchase act? the law that covers all of this & the precedents can easily be found d34l :-0)
 
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