Personal number plates and private car registration plates

Having a poke around (as you do), I found a new blog on number plates.

Cool.

Or is it???

Looking closely at the content, there was an element of familiarity about it. Some familiar phrases, and specific words. “This sounds like me” I thought. And what do you know? It is me!! What’s the deal? Simple really…. someone’s copied my blog! And put it on theirs! Much of some of my articles have been replicated, almost word for word.

Should I be flattered? Well, maybe. I guess it tells me my stuff is good, and useful.

On the flip side, as it’s another number plate company doing it, I’m not impressed. And my attempts to contact them have been ignored.

I’m not going to link this company, or name & shame them. But they know who they are. And, as they’ve been checking out this blog, they’ll no doubt see this.

Come on guys…. do your own thing, and be original! Tell us that you actually do know something about number plates.

What to do when someone steals your content

The process of buying a personal number plate is far from foolproof.

Today I spoke to a man who had ‘bought’ a private registration number. He had paid £400 for the registration number, in a private sale via an online auction. The registration number was held on a number plate Retention Document. The seller had added the buyer’s name to the retention certificate as ‘nominee’, and sent it to him. All perfectly correct so far.

But the buyer has lost registration number he purchased. So what went wrong?

The buyer didn’t assign the registration number to his vehicle as he had intended to just keep it as an investment. When the retention document came up for renewal, the DVLA sent the reminder to the ‘grantee’ named on the retention document. The ‘grantee’ was the original seller. The seller renewed the retention document, and assigned the registration to his own vehicle (which he was legally entitled to do). And that was that. Unfortunately, there was little the buyer could do.

The DVLA’s rules for transferring ‘ownership’ of a registration number are, unfortunately, open to abuse. They are plugging the gaps, with persistence from the CNDA. But it’s a long, slow process.

My advice….? If you’ve bought a number plate on a retention document, assign the registration to a vehicle as soon as you can. Once it’s on your vehicle, the original owner no longer has a claim on it.

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Today I spoke to a client who had decided to sell her name number plate with us.

I know dealers’ commission fees on number plates can be high…. in the most extreme cases we know dealers charge fees of 50% of the advertised selling price. Until today. This lady’s registration number is advertised on a dealer’s site for £1450. Should it sell for the asking price, she will receive just £600! That’s a whopping fee of 59%! Ouch!

To make things worse…. she had also approached another dealer. The other dealer was selling the same registration number for just £475. A price that’s well below what the number plate is worth. So it doesn’t leave a lot once commission fees have been paid! This dealer had persuaded the owner that her number plate was worth very little. There are very few similar number plates available on the market at the moment… they’re all gone. So this one for £475 would be an absolute steal. So what’s the deal here? Why is it priced so low? I can only assume that, as a low priced number plate will sell quickly, the dealer can realise a commission much more quickly…. compromising on the size of the number plate commission itself.

We did an independent valuation of this registration number…and came up with a price of £1200. Selling the number plate privately (with no commission fees of course) will mean the owner keeps all of the achieved selling price. And the buyer pays a more sensible price too. And the dealer gets zero…. sounds good to me.

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What do you give to the person who has everything? I’m finding more and more people are turning to personal number plates as an unusual gift. So what’s the big deal?

Customers are telling us that, as each registration number is unique, it’s a distinctive and personal gift. And we know from experience that people do keep their private registration number for years, sometimes decades. Every number plate, it seems, has a story… and that’s the appeal. Our clients have spent many hours choosing just the right one.

“My parents gave me my number plate for my 21st”….. “My family bought this for my 40th birthday“…… “My fiance bought me this as a wedding present”….. the stories are as individual as the the registration numbers.

So is a private number plate a good gift? Well, that depends. If chosen well, then absolutely. They start from around £150. And, unlike the latest gadgets, can be kept a lifetime.

A good number plate will be kept for many years. Take care to get it right though! It’s not unknown for someone to buy a private number plate for their partner, only to find that their partner doesn’t even like personal registrations! So make sure you test the water first.

Last Friday found me at the Birmingham NEC, at the Motorcycle Show 2007. Not being a motorbike aficionado, I thought it would all be a bit overwhelming…..swarming with tattooed, long-haired bikers. How wrong could I be?

Not being a biker myself, here’s a view of this year’s motorcycle show from a “biker chick in training”…….

There was a buzz in the air from the moment I walked in, faced with a magnificent Carole Nash stand. Some guys really go to town on custom bikes…imagination knows no bounds it seems. Every feature is there for impact…. and all practicality goes out of the window! Bright metallic purple bodywork and strong shapes are the order of the day. These are not so much bikes, as works of art. My camera was working overtime, the results of which can be seen on flickr.

But the show wasn’t just about customised bikes. All the big names were there – Harley, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and of course Ducatti – with their latest models. Presented with a lot of fanfare, dry ice, and women in provocative clothing….. a part of most motoring events that always puts a smile on my face. It was refreshing to hear a man’s viewpoint on this aspect of the show “…If I want to see girls simulating being touched up, for the amusement of drunken blokes or not, then I’ll go to a sex show….”.

But it was a great opportunity for visitors to climb onto their favourite bikes and maybe indulge in a little dreaming.

I’m not going to talk about individual models of bike – I don’t know enough about bikes, and there are plenty of other blogs that would do it far better justice than I can here. For me, the highlight was getting up close to the bikes ridden by Charley Boorman and Claudio von Planta (cameraman) in Long Way Down. I was even able to get on to Claudio’s bike… awesome when you think about the 15,000 miles and experiences that bike’s been through! Having watched a lot this fascinating journey on tv, it was a real treat.

Didn’t see any great motorbike number plates, though…..

So why the bike show? Call it a fascination for shiny metal in all shapes and colours….. and maybe a little bit of a penchant for leathers.