Selling cars and the new insurance rule....

Durzel

Durzel

Durzel

Soldato
Joined
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5,518
Location
Wiltshire
Sorry if this has been covered already...

I've just recently found myself in the situation where I have two cars and am in the process of selling my old car. Because my original insurance company would not insure the new car, and you can't share NCD across two concurrent policies, I had to cancel my old policy so that I could take out a new one elsewhere using my NCD.

My old car is taxed until November 2011, has an MOT that runs until 2012, etc. It is parked off the road in ungated residential parking (technically could be construed as a public place, I don't know). I no longer need to drive my old car, so it is just parked up.

My original plan before hearing about this change was to insure my old car with temporary cover on a day-basis - i.e. someone says they are coming down to view it, I insure it for the day so I can conduct a test drive, etc. After that it goes back to being a vehicle that is just parked up that I don't actually move anywhere.

Unfortunately as I understand it now this is illegal. What options do I have other than insuring a car I don't intend to drive, which won't move from where it is parked except for test drives? Surely I don't have to SORN and unSORN and reapply for a tax disc every single time someone comes down to view it? This could happen week on week, possibly even more than once a week. It seems utter lunacy to me that I would have to keep SORN/unSORNing a car that isn't being driven except on occasions when I would be taking out a day-long insurance policy anyway.

Any thoughts?
 
Can you add it cheaply as a second car?

You could also try phoning the DVLA and seeing if they can do anything useful?
 
Sadly you are right. It is completely and utterly ridiculous and I cannot see what purpose it serves. My E39 is parked on private land so the fact I am now forced to cash the tax in because of the insurance is just ridiculous - what possible business of them is it what I do with a vehicle parked on private land and not used on the public highway?

Just how are you supposed to legally take people out to show them the car with this stupid rule?
 
[TW]Fox;19426993 said:
Sadly you are right. It is completely and utterly ridiculous and I cannot see what purpose it serves. My E39 is parked on private land so the fact I am now forced to cash the tax in because of the insurance is just ridiculous - what possible business of them is it what I do with a vehicle parked on private land and not used on the public highway?

Just how are you supposed to legally take people out to show them the car with this stupid rule?
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I completely agree.

People with no insurance will be driving around SORN anyway as they cannot buy tax.

Utterly ridiculous, serves no purpose as far as I can see!
 
I posted same situation, gonna add 2nd car to insurance for a month for £76. It hurts but its better than sorning it reapplying and then insuring it anyho. just hope it budges in 30 days, or it will start getting expensive, stupid rule.
 
[TW]Fox;19426993 said:
Sadly you are right. It is completely and utterly ridiculous and I cannot see what purpose it serves. My E39 is parked on private land so the fact I am now forced to cash the tax in because of the insurance is just ridiculous - what possible business of them is it what I do with a vehicle parked on private land and not used on the public highway?

Just how are you supposed to legally take people out to show them the car with this stupid rule?
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What if a small tornado ripped through your land and picked up the E39 and dumped it 2 miles away? :p
 
daz87uk said:
I posted same situation, gonna add 2nd car to insurance for a month for £76. It hurts but its better than sorning it reapplying and then insuring it anyho. just hope it budges in 30 days, or it will start getting expensive, stupid rule.
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The stupid thing is now that I'm actually going to have to factor in this potential additional cost into the cars sale price.

I had a price in my mind that I wanted to accept and whilst I have the space to keep the car indefinitely and am not desperate for the cash the longer it remains unsold the more it is going to cost me. If someone pitches up this weekend and offers me £200 less than I want I'm going to have to think long and hard about whether it's worth accepting purely to avoid the cost of completely unnecessary long term insurance or potential fines, etc.
 
I'm in this dilemma. I have my fathers car which I declared SORN as it it's uninsured, and parked on private land. This was just before the new law came into play.

Now I'm wanting to get rid of this vehicle, I declared it SORN as I was waiting for the V5 to come in my name.

How would I go about selling it? I would need to un-SORN it, and then insure it wouldn't I?

It has tax and mot till august this year.
 
Wanna know what's stupid about this new rule (unless I'm being stupid)....

It's designed to catch uninsured drivers, but anyone knowingly driving without insurance would surely just fraudulently SORN their car anyway thus avoiding the automated warning/fine letters and leaving it to chance as to whether they pass a cop/ANPR on their travels. If they can't afford (or don't want to) insurance why would they pay for tax as well if they don't have to? In for a penny....

For me though if I don't declare my car SORN then I'm going to receive that automated letter/fine, even though I'm not driving the car!

Doesn't that seem completely about face to anyone else?
 
Durzel said:
Doesn't that seem completely about face to anyone else?
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It is indeed, it seems to be designed on the premise of: Lets try and catch people doing one illegal thing on the assumption they'll be honest enough to not be doing a different but related illegal thing.

Absolute stupidity.
 
I got stung by this. Ended up keeping it taxed and insured, overlapping with the other car. Same policy made things a little bit simpler.

The 2-3 week overlap cost me about £50 in extra insurance. The alternative was having asking people to buy without seeing the car on the road.

I think I'm just going to buy from a dealer and part exchange next time - or maybe sell before buying. Current situation has made the whole thing too much faff.
 
Typical government mentality of trying to fix a problem (in this case uninsured drivers) by introducing loads of stuff to combat the problem thus inconveniencing all the honest citizens while not really bothering the ones its supposed to target who will just SORN their car and carry on driving uninsured anyway.

Most people would aim for the root cause of the problem (over inflated prices and corruption in the insurance industry leading to it being more cost effective for some poorer people to just risk not having insurance) but then politicians are not most people...
 
Uriel said:
I got stung by this.
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Did you get a fine or just a warning letter? How soon did you receive one?

I've got a viewing this weekend and I've already given the guy a test drive, crossing my fingers he decides to buy so I can try and avoid the whole issue.
 
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