Your CR-V came with no history. Tell us what you know.
Ask most buyers about a family SUV with no service book and the missing folder quietly becomes the whole conversation, whatever the car in the driveway is actually like.
Here it is one of the first things we ask about and one of the last things that decides the number, because somebody is coming out to stand in front of the car.
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The missing folder
Nobody gave you the history, and it was never yours to give
This is one of the ordinary ways a second hand family car ends up in a driveway, and one of the least deserved things a seller ends up apologising for.
It usually happened the same way. You wanted something with room in it, this one came up at the right time for the right money, and what changed hands on the day was a key, a registration paper and a handshake. Perhaps there was a folder in the glovebox with an old tyre receipt in it. Perhaps there was nothing at all. Nobody sat you down and went through who had looked after it and when, and you had no reason to ask, because you were buying a car to use rather than a car to sell.
Then years later you come to sell it and every form on the internet wants full service history as though it were a box anybody can tick. It is an odd thing to be judged on, because the missing part of that record is the part that was never in your hands. What is actually being asked is whether the car has been looked after, and a stamped book is one way of answering that. It is the fast way, and fast is why it gets asked for. The slower way is to look at the car, and somebody is coming out to do that anyway.
So the blank is not the disaster people expect it to be. An inspector standing in a driveway is not reading a folder, and what has and has not been done to a car tends to show whether or not anybody wrote it down at the time. What we would much rather avoid is the other thing, which is a confident answer that turns out not to be true. If you genuinely have no idea who serviced it before you owned it, that is an answer, and it is a better one than a guess.
On the call
What we ask when the paperwork was never handed over
Six questions, and I do not know is a perfectly good answer to any of them. None of it is a test and none of it decides whether we are interested.
- How long have you had it, and what came with it on the day?
- One key and a registration paper is the usual answer and nobody flinches at it. What it tells us is where the written record actually starts, which on a car like this is almost always the day you bought it rather than the day it was built.
- Do you know who you bought it from?
- A dealer, a neighbour, an online ad, somebody in the family. We are not checking up on anybody. A car that came from a relative usually arrives with a story attached and one that came off a lot usually does not, and that changes how much of the earlier life is knowable at all.
- What have you had done to it while you have owned it?
- This is the part of the history that is yours and most people badly underrate it. The place you have taken it to, the tyres, the brakes, the windscreen, the thing that went wrong once. If it has been the same workshop every time, it is worth asking them what they still have on file.
- Is there a second key?
- Keys are the first thing to disappear on a car that has changed hands, and plenty of second owners were only ever handed one. Say which it is. A key that exists is worth finding before the day, and a key that never existed is a line in the number rather than a problem.
- Do you know whether it has ever been in anything?
- Plenty of people in your position honestly do not, and that is a fair answer to give. What we are really asking about is the part of its life you were there for, and whether anything you know of has been repaired since. Older than you is not yours to account for.
- Has the hybrid side of it ever needed anything?
- Most owners in this position cannot say, and it is far less of an obstacle than it sounds. The battery is checked on the day, in front of you, so nothing here rests on a service book that was never in the car to begin with.
With or without the book
Three things a missing service book does not decide
- A gap in the record is not a mark against the car. It gets looked at the same way whether the book is fully stamped, half stamped or was never in the car at all. The folder was only ever a shortcut to the thing somebody is coming out to see for himself.
- I do not know is an answer. It is a more useful one than a guess, because the guess is what moves a number after the call. Say what you know, say plainly what you do not, and let the inspection fill in the rest.
- There is nothing you have to go and find first. No paperwork to chase, no previous owner to track down, nothing to produce before anybody will talk to you about a figure. Send the car through as it stands today and we work from what is actually there.
Three questions
What people ask when there is no paperwork
Will you pay less because there is no service history?
Not for the absence by itself. What moves a number is what the car turns out to be, and the inspector is coming out to find that rather than to read a folder. Where a gap does cost something it is usually because nobody can tell whether one particular job was ever done, and that is a much smaller thing than most people are braced for.
It came from a dealer who told me nothing about it. Is that a problem?
No, and it is one of the most ordinary ways these cars change hands. Tell us what little you were told and leave the gaps as gaps. Nothing about the day depends on you being able to account for the years before you owned it.
Should I try to track the service history down before you come?
Only if it is easy. If you have used the one workshop since you bought it, a phone call to them is worth making and takes a minute. Beyond that, do not spend a weekend on it. Nobody is going to hold an empty glovebox against you and the inspection does not wait on paper.
Send the CR-V through as it stands, empty glovebox and all.
Or call us on 03 9000 0075 and talk it through first.