I tried to sell my car but was told it had been written off

The Guardian

26-03-2025

Last summer I took my old Kia to a branch of the car broker webuyanycar to sell, only to discover that its database showed a car with my registration number had been 'written off' and an insurance claim paid out.
This came as a shock. I have not been in an accident nor made any claims. I called up my insurer, which confirmed there was nothing on its records, and it told me to call the policy underwriter.
Initially the underwriter said it had no record of a claim either. However, after it consulted a national database, it could see that in February 2024 one had been paid out on my car.
It gave me the insurer's name – 1st Central – and the claim number. However, when I called up, the company told me it had never insured a car with that registration and did not have any record of the claim.
I then contacted Bedfordshire police, who directed me to Action Fraud. However, their emailed reply told me that the matter 'cannot be classified as a police recorded crime' and said I needed to contact the DVLA.
The DVLA told me to write them a formal letter and promised to get back to me in six to eight weeks. Obviously that did not happen, so I chased them and was eventually told by someone in the fraud team that my licence plate had been cloned and they were 'looking into it'.
This all means that I'm left with a car I can't sell and no end in sight. At best I'll get scrap for it. I can't understand how someone can circumvent me and my insurer to fraudulently claim my car is a write-off and pocket the cash. Can you help?
TL, Leighton Buzzard
You have been round the houses trying to solve this mystery, and your dealings with the DVLA were frustrating to say the least. Initially I thought I was investigating car cloning (where criminals copy another car's registration plates) but the truth proved more mundane.
When I contacted 1st Central, it sprang into action and soon discovered that a typo had resulted in your car being mistakenly consigned to the scrapheap.
A 1st Central spokesperson told me that initially it had been unable to help because you had been given the wrong claims reference number. 'We have subsequently investigated and found that human error meant an incorrect vehicle registration number was inputted into the write-off database. This highly rare anomaly occurred because the make, model and registration were almost an exact match for another vehicle. We have now corrected this and offered TL compensation.'
You have accepted the £560, which includes £110 to cover depreciation over the nine months it took to resolve this.
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