Buying a car you have never seen

Buying at a distance costs time, money and nerves. It pays when the difference is big enough to carry all three: on rare models and specifications, on cars that are systematically cheaper in another market, and on configurations that simply do not exist in your own region. On a mainstream hatchback it almost never pays.

Work the cost out beforehand, not afterwards: travel or transport, an independent inspection where the car is, registration formalities, and where needed temporary plates and insurance for the drive home. If a few hundred euros of advantage remain after that, it is not an advantage but a risk with nothing on the other side.

And separate two cases that often get mixed up: buying from a dealer in another country is a transaction with a business that knows export and paperwork and against whom you have rights. Buying from a private individual you have never met is a different thing — there you carry almost everything yourself.

A video appointment does not replace the viewing, but it replaces a journey to a car that would have come to nothing anyway. Insist on a live call rather than footage sent to you: a video you do not steer shows exactly what the sender wants shown. Arrange a morning slot so the engine is cold, and send a short list beforehand of what you want to see.

That the call really is live you check in passing by asking for something nobody can prepare: pan the camera from the odometer to the number plate, put the right indicator on, open the bonnet and pull the dipstick while you watch. Anyone who cannot or will not do that has saved you the trip.

This is the most important step in the whole process and the only one that cannot be substituted. Commission a workshop near the car — not the seller's, and not one he suggests. You pay for the inspection, you receive the report, and the seller merely makes the car available.

Be precise in the brief, or you will get a general note on condition. Ask for: paint thickness measured panel by panel, an inspection on a lift with photographs of the underbody, sills and strut towers, a fault memory readout with printout, a test drive with a written report and, on an electric car, a battery condition report.

A seller who refuses such an inspection has thereby answered every remaining question. One who arranges it has earned a measure of trust — and as a rule also has a car that passes.

Before anything is signed you need four things as legible images: both parts of the registration document, the chassis number on the car, the latest inspection report and — with a private seller — the identity document of the person you are dealing with. The names have to match.

If the name on the identity document does not match the registered keeper, that is not automatically fraud, but it is an open question that must be answered before payment: a written power of attorney, a certificate of inheritance, a company somebody is acting for. No answer, no money.

Where the part of the paperwork that documents ownership is missing, the commonest reason is outstanding finance — the bank is holding it. A car in that position can be bought, but only with the bank in the process, and never by paying the seller alone.

The basic rule is short: money and car change hands at the same moment. Every departure from that is an arrangement somebody proposed, and that somebody was not you. Advance payment to a private individual you have never met does not happen — not as a deposit, not as a reservation, not as proof of serious interest.

Two routes work. First: you travel there, see the car, sign the contract and transfer the money from your phone at the seller's bank branch, or hand it over at a bank. Second: the seller is a registered company, issues an invoice in that company's name and delivers against payment — that is a business transaction with a counterparty you can find again.

What Carvexia does not offer is worth saying plainly: no escrow, no payment handling, no reserving a car and no history check. The marketplace brings supply and demand together and is not a party to the sale. Anyone offering you payment handling in a marketplace's name is offering something that does not exist here.

There are two ways to get the car home, and they differ in risk. Driving it yourself means you see the car at handover, assess it on the first leg and notice at once if something is wrong. For that you need a registration for the journey — export or temporary plates, depending on the country — and insurance that covers it. You organise both before you set off, not on handover day.

Transport by truck is more comfortable, more expensive, and shifts the risk: you first see the car when it arrives, by which time the contract is long since concluded. So in that case you need a written condition report with photographs taken before loading, produced by the workshop that inspected it, and a consignment note recording the condition at pick-up. Otherwise transport damage cannot be attributed to anyone.

On a car from outside the customs union, import comes on top: declaration, import charges assessed on the value of the vehicle, and the technical inspection in the destination country. The sequence and the responsible authorities are set out in the country guide; the current rates come from the customs administration concerned and nobody else.

Where the contract is concluded with a business exclusively by means of distance communication — telephone, email, web form — EU distance selling law applies. That includes a consumer right of withdrawal within a short period set by law. Exactly how long it runs, when it starts and which exceptions apply is a question for the consumer advice body or the competent authority in the seller's country.

Two limitations belong with it. First, a contract signed at the dealer's premises does not fall under it, even if everything before that ran by email. Second, withdrawing on a car is not free: the return transport is yours to arrange, and compensation for value may be due for the distance driven.

In practice: the right of withdrawal is a safety net, not a plan. It does not replace inspecting the car beforehand, but it makes a cross-border purchase from a commercial seller considerably more predictable than from a private one.

The following points are not negotiating topics. Any one of them ends the deal, however good the car looks and however plausible the explanation sounds. That is not severity but economy of effort: once you start making exceptions, you make one at the next point too.

The list is set out in the order in which the points arise in the process. Read it before the first phone call and you recognise them as they come up — instead of reconstructing them from memory afterwards, once the money is already on its way.

Bring somebody with you, plan for daylight and allow two hours. Papers and chassis number first, then a comparison of the car against the inspection report — not a repeat of the whole inspection, but a check of the report's points and of whether anything has been added since. Then the contract, then the money, then the keys.

The contract needs the same points as any other purchase, plus two that only arise here: the condition at handover with reference to the inspection report, and the date on which the car is deregistered. And the price actually paid — a lower figure in the contract comes back at you at the latest on import, where that contract serves as proof of value.