When selling a vehicle, there are an increasing number of cases in which buyers fail to fulfill their obligation to deregister or transfer ownership of the vehicle. As a result, sellers continue to pay vehicle tax and possibly also insurance.
As a seller, you can protect yourself against this by reading the following information carefully, filling out the "Notice of Sale" form, and returning the form signed by the buyer and yourself to us.
The best protection is to decommission the vehicle before handing it over to the buyer. To do this, you will need the registration certificate part I (vehicle registration document) and the vehicle's license plates.
Please fill out the notice of sale yourself, completely and legibly. Check the buyer's details (name and address) against their ID, as there are many fraudsters out there. They buy vehicles under false names and addresses. If buyers are unwilling or unable to show their ID, be cautious.
Experience shows that such fraudsters often buy at car markets. These cases of fraud are particularly common with vehicles worth up to €3,000.
Even if you are happy to have sold your vehicle, this joy can very quickly turn into the opposite if you still have to pay the vehicle tax and possibly the insurance.
In this case, even the agreement included in many sales contracts, whereby buyers undertake to deregister or re-register the vehicle within three days, will not help you. If buyers do not comply with this, you can only take legal action under private law.
It is particularly problematic if the vehicle is sold abroad. If buyers register the vehicle abroad, we usually do not receive any notification from the foreign registration office. It is then your responsibility to obtain the necessary documents abroad in order to arrange for the vehicle to be taken out of service. This is often very difficult and time-consuming.
To avoid these problems for your own safety, we recommend decommissioning the vehicle before selling it.
Information on problems after the sale of a vehicle
If you have sold your vehicle while it is still registered and the buyer does not comply with the obligation to transfer the registration or decommission the vehicle, you must do the following:
- Let us know who you sold the vehicle to (exact name and full address).
- Report the sale to your car insurance company and arrange for them to send us an insurance notification in accordance with § 51 FZV. This will result in the insurance company revoking the insurance coverage. We need this notification in order to have the vehicle listed as wanted.
Regardless of this, you can also take action yourself:
- Try to contact the buyer.
- Ask why the vehicle has not yet been de-registered or re-registered.
- Try to get the buyer to hand over the registration certificate part I (vehicle registration document) and the license plates so that you can de-register the vehicle yourself. After de-registering the vehicle, you can then return the registration certificates part I.
To avoid such inconveniences in the future, you should decommission your next vehicle before selling it.
