Correcting incorrect mileage on an MOT record (UK)
March 26, 2022 12:23 PM   Subscribe

How much of a headache is this to do? More than 28 days have passed since the MOT, but only just - the certificate is still valid and hasn't been superseded by a later MOT.

I’m hoping to buy a used 2011 Honda Jazz, which currently has c.49,000 miles on the clock. It was MOT’d last month by the same Honda dealership that I’m buying from, but they mistakenly wrote the mileage at 488,803 miles on the MOT certificate, when it was clearly c.48,880. The MOT record for the vehicle at .GOV now shows 488,803. There’s a full service/MOT history which supports the current mileage and that the most recent entry was a mistake (eg. the past two years the MOT was registered with 41,500 and 44,500 miles). The past 8 MOTs were all done by the same Honda dealership I’m buying from.

The AA website says that you can’t correct it after 28 days and that having the wrong mileage is a problem. But the .gov website says you can correct it after that with one of four documents - I assume the latter is correct? Have any MeFites done this before? Am I right in assuming there was a fairly recent change in the rules and that the AA website is just out of date? Will it be fairly simple, assuming the Honda mechanic gives me one of those four documents listed when he gets back into work on Monday? Is any one of those four documents preferable?

I know there are probably plenty of other Honda Jazz out there that don't have this problem, but I like everything else about it; getting to car dealerships, taking another person along with me for company whose approach to such things matches mine etc., is tricky, so having seen and test driven this one, if I can make this work, I'd like to.

This is one of those ‘Please be kind, I’m way out of my comfort zone’ questions - I’ve never bought a used car in the UK before, so have no idea what counts as ‘This is super simple, easily put right’ and ‘This ends up being more difficult than you'd expect to put right and/or could become a real headache when you want to trade/sell in future’. Thanks.
posted by penguin pie to Travel & Transportation (1 answer total)
 
The two sites don’t contradict each other. The original tester can only correct within 28 days. After that the DVSA has to do it for the owner. It sounds as if the current owner is the dealership and they are trying to sell the car. Clearly they can’t expect to sell a car with just shy of 500k miles on the clock for more than a £1. So on Monday, I’d alert them to the error and make it clear you’ll only proceed with the purchase once they have corrected the mistake. If they won’t do that I would not buy a car from them……
posted by koahiatamadl at 2:19 PM on March 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


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