Logbook document delayed
▶ There was, though, a slight twist in the Citroën C5 purchase. The car was listed – and bought – as having a V5C ‘present’ but it arrived without one. Slightly more worryingly, the only paperwork with the car when it arrived was the pass-out slip from BCA Wolverhampton, on which someone had written ‘no V5’.
To their credit however BCA sorted this situation quickly and professionally, and I was impressed. I called the customer services team who were able to confirm that, because the document had been scanned, it must be somewhere in their system. This meant that they could also provide me with a document reference number, with which I was able to download MOT certificates back to 2016 which were the key to tracing the service history. The following day I got a message from Wolverhampton, apologising for the error, attaching a scan of the document and giving a tracking number for the original which had been posted and duly arrived a couple of days later.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, bear in mind that you don’t actually have to have possession of the physical V5C document in order to transfer ownership – all you actually need is the document reference number – if you have the document reference number you can use that to transfer the vehicle to its new keeper online. You don’t need the document itself.
I would, though, recommend trying a ‘dummy transfer’ before doing it for an actual customer, just in case the document reference number you have is not the latest one. To do this all you have to do is process the transaction online until you get to the ‘Enter New Keeper’ details screen, and then ‘abandon’ the transaction before keying in any new keeper details. If you get to that stage, the document reference number is valid.
You or your customer can also tax the car without a physical V5C, but to do this you need the other reference number, from the tear-off New Keeper V5C slip.