Email us: enquiries@totalcarcheck.co.uk
We will always do our best to reply to your enquiries within 24hrs. We promise.
We are available throughout the week, Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm to help you out.
If you have any questions regarding a specific vehicle check, it would help if you send us the vehicle registration and/or the report reference number.
Yes, we store all of the reports our customers pay for.
If you register prior to purchase then your report will be available to you when you login.
We will not have generated a report unless your payment was successful. So please check this is the case first. Then e-mail enquiries@totalcarcheck.co.uk and we will be able to find it and resend it to you.
Our reports are valid at the time they are run, but the data they return can and will change over time. This means you may need to run another check on the same vehicle if days and weeks have passed.
Total Car Check has to charge each time a report is generated because we incur costs for calling on third party data. Another payment or voucher therefore needs to be paid or redeemed even if you have already undertaken a check on the same vehicle.
You may be considering a vehicle purchase, or vehicle sale, whereby outstanding finance has only very recently been cleared. Where this happens it can take up to 3 working days for the change to be reflected in a Total Car Check report.
This however depends on the clearance process undertaken by the finance provider.
We strongly recommend that you do not purchase the vehicle until a Total Car Check report provides confirmation that the vehicle is clear of finance.
You may be looking to purchase, or sell a vehicle, where the personalised registration plate is removed and replaced with the original registration plates. The seller would need to report this to the DVLA.
Total Car Check has no control over registration plate data which we receive automatically from the DVLA and other third parties. If you are concerned that the plate change is not showing in our report then we suggest you contact the DVLA to confirm that everything is in order.
The most common reason for a registered number plate not to return a vehicle check is due to the time taken for the DVLA to process vehicle data:
Plate changes - If the vehicle has had a recent plate change then this can take up to 2 weeks to be processed.
New vehicles - it can take up to 6-8 weeks for the DVLA to send through newly registered vehicle data.
Untaxed vehicles - where a vehicle has not been registered for road tax / vehicle excise duty for a long period of time the DVLA can under certain circumstances deregister it.
Where we show there to be a finance warning, or cannot confirm if there is finance outstanding, you will need to email trade.investigations@uk.experian.com to clarify the finance status.
You can reset your password here: https://totalcarcheck.co.uk/Account/ForgotPassword
We provide a valuation for the vast majority of vehicles checked. However, for some there may be no data available. We can only provide valuations on cars less than 20 years old in general.
For customers that have reviewed Total Car Check on Trust Pilot, the App Store or Play Store we provide a free Silver Check voucher. To claim please provide details of your purchase and a link to your review by e-mailing enquiries@totalcarcheck.co.uk. We will then send you a voucher.
After purchasing a Silver or Gold Check the report will be made available to you instantly on the screen. You will also receive a pdf version of the report sent to the email address you provide upon payment.
If you have registered an account with us and made a purchase whilst logged in the report will be available under the menu options: ‘My Checks’ > ‘Purchased’. You will also receive a pdf report available to download by email.
For a VRM to return a report to you the vehicle must be registered by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). In rare cases a registration number may be ‘on retention’ meaning it is not assigned to a particular vehicle.
It is more likely that the VRM has been entered incorrectly. The most common error is mistaking a O and 0 (letter and number). The current number plate format requires that the 3rd and 4th digit are numbers and the rest are letters: LLNN LLL e.g. EN51 TYU.
If you’re still having problems then feel free to get in touch with us and we can advise enquiries@totalcarcheck.co.uk.
In the very rare event you have purchased a Silver or Gold Check which has led to loss caused by inaccurate information as a result of Total Car Check’s error then you may be able to claim against our data guarantee. The full terms and conditions which determine whether or not you can make a claim are available at https://totalcarcheck.co.uk/TotalCarCheckGuarantee
A separate guarantee is provided relating to outstanding finance data where a Gold Check has been purchased.
If you have evidence to suggest a vehicle you have purchased was stolen or written-off and a Total Car Check report did not flag this then please e-mail details of the report you purchased to enquiries@totalcarcheck.co.uk and we will investigate.
In the very rare event you purchase a vehicle that has been subject to an inaccurate outstanding finance check then you may be able to claim against a guarantee provided by Experian. Experian power Total Car Check’s outstanding finance check. Go to https://totalcarcheck.co.uk/ExperianGuarantee to see our outstanding finance check terms and conditions.
Total Car Check investigate these cases and contact Experian on your behalf where a claim can be made. You will need to send us any details you’ve received stating the vehicle you’ve purchased is on finance and e-mail this information to enquiries@totalcarcheck.co.uk.
To see what our free report provides then give it a go by entering your VRM on our home page. The difference between the data provided by our Silver and Gold check products is set out in our prices and feature comparison page.
Take a look at our sample report which shows you what a Gold Check report looks like. Our glossary explains what each data field means.
The Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is a unique identifier applied to every manufactured vehicle in the world. All modern-day vehicles, no matter where they are produced, have a 17-digit VIN.
Total Car Check, and all other vehicle history check providers, are only able to provide the last 4 digits of the VIN in our reports. This is a requirement put in place by the DVLA (who share this data) to help prevent vehicle fraud such as car cloning and ringing.
You can use our free VIN check, which is also available within a free initial check report. This will tell you if the VIN number matches up to the vehicle registration number based on the data held by the DVLA. It’s also worth checking these details against the pink V5C registration document which the vehicle’s keeper should have.
It means that the registration plates are not those that should be fitted to the vehicle, according to the DVLA. Driving with unregistered plates is an offence in itself. There is a possibility the mismatch could be due to a plate transfer. But aside from this it is likely the vehicle has been cloned, whereby criminals have applied different number plates to hide the fact it has been stolen. The vehicle would not be recorded as stolen by the police and insurers based on its registration plate. We would therefore not show the vehicle as stolen in our report. Here are steps to take if your check returns a mismatch:
Our important data checks page outlines the key risks. Although a Total Car Check is an excellent tool for validating a vehicle you are looking to purchase, there are physical checks of the vehicle and related paperwork, that we recommend you take. Please view our used car buyer advice for further details.
You can access the full history of checks you have undertaken through the ‘MY CHECKS’ page when logged in. This includes free, purchased and voucher checks. We also send every purchased check to you by e-mail in pdf format. Buying a check without registering can lead to some of our users accidentally navigating away from the page and losing the report (we can of course locate and send this to you if this happens).
We strongly recommend you purchase our Gold Check. Why? It includes an outstanding finance check and provides you with a £30,000 finance data guarantee. This is really important in the current market because a large proportion of vehicles are financed and if you purchase a vehicle with outstanding finance then you could have it repossessed from you and lose the money you paid on top.
If you are looking for an explanation of all of the data fields we use in our reports then see our glossary page which explains the information we provide.
Our free basic check is the most popular in the UK because we provide a lot of data for free that many of our competitors don’t. This includes a free stolen vehicle check. This information is great for undertaking research on the type of vehicles you might want to buy or have seen advertised. Amongst other things a free check will provide the specification of vehicle’s, their keeper, MOT and mileage history.
You can find a full break down of the prices on our pricing page and features of both checks.
A Silver Check gives you a lot of key risk data about a vehicle for as little as £1.99 on top of everything our free basic check provides. This includes data flagging if a vehicle has been in a significant accident leading to it being written off, scrapped or placed into salvage.
A silver check is therefore suitable for research purposes and shortlisting vehicles to check if they are safe to drive and do not hold any adverse history that may affect the vehicle’s value.
Our Gold Check is the one to go for if you are considering buying the vehicle. It gives you everything a Silver Check does as well as providing a finance check, £30,000 finance data guarantee and valuation.
Undertaking an outstanding finance check is incredibly important when buying a new used car because a large proportion of vehicles in the UK are financed. This means they are owned by finance providers until the keeper has repaid the loan in full. If you buy a vehicle that has outstanding finance then it could be repossessed from you by agents of the finance provider. You lose the vehicle and the money you paid to purchase it.
Yes you can. Once you have purchased a Silver Check there will be links within the report provided online which when clicked will allow you to pay an additional sum to convert to a Gold report.
We recommend you view and test drive any vehicles you are looking at purchasing and undertake some additional physical spot checks. This is particularly important when buying from a private seller. Please view our used car buyer advice for comprehensive guide for buyers.
You should unless the retailer can provide you with details of a full vehicle provenance check they’ve undertaken. See further information on buying from a retailer in our used vehicle buyer guidance.
Yes. We do provide vehicle check reports relating to Northern Ireland.
No. These vehicles are registered with their respective non-UK Government transport authorities who do not share information with third parties.
We update our database with UK average petrol, diesel and electricity prices obtained from reputable sources on a regular basis.
For petrol and diesel vehicles we base our calculation on the current petrol and diesel prices and miles per imperial gallon (MPG) figures. For vehicles subject to the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) standard we use the ‘Urban’ fuel economy value. For vehicles subject to the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test (WLTP) standard we use the ‘up to 50mph’ fuel economy value.
For electric vehicles we base our calculation on Real Range and Usable Battery (capacity) values combined with average UK electricity prices for public and home charging.
All of the voucher codes we now provide expire after 2 years as standard.
Our free initial check includes MOT mileage records for registered users. Our Silver and Gold checks include an extended mileage check on additional sources of mileage data. View our mileage check page for further information.