Terms and conditions

About these terms

These terms apply when you use vettly.co.uk, including the free vehicle check, MOT and tax reminders and the plate scanner, and when you buy a full history check. Please read them before you buy. By using Vettly or buying a check, you agree to them.

In these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean Vettly, and "you" means the person using the site. You are a consumer if you are an individual using Vettly wholly or mainly for purposes outside your trade, business, craft or profession.

Our privacy notice explains how we use your personal data, and our cookie policy explains the cookies we use.

Who we are

Vettly is a trading name of AI Programs Holdings Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17516543). Registered office: 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX.

The quickest way to reach us is by email at hello@vettly.co.uk or through our contact form. We handle all enquiries by email.

What Vettly provides

• Free vehicle check. Enter a registration to see the tax and MOT status and registered details from the DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service and the MOT history from the DVSA, with our own estimates of vehicle tax and running costs, a clean air zone check and a Vettly Score.
• Full history check (£4.49). A report on one vehicle from a licensed vehicle data supplier, which draws on finance company records, the insurance industry's write-off register and police stolen vehicle records. It covers outstanding finance, insurance write-offs, stolen, scrapped and high-risk markers, previous keepers, plate and colour changes, import and export markers, the last 5 characters of the VIN and the engine number, mileage records, and a valuation and specification where available.
• MOT and tax reminders. Free reminder emails before the MOT or tax is due on vehicles you add to your account, using the dates in the official records.
• Plate scanner. Point your camera at a number plate instead of typing the registration.

Not every item is available for every vehicle. If a source has no record, or does not give a clear answer, the report says so.

Reminders are a free extra. Emails can be delayed or filtered as spam, so you remain responsible for keeping your vehicle taxed and its MOT valid. The plate scanner can misread a plate, so check the registration before you buy a report.

Your account

• You can create an account with your email address and a password, or sign in with a one-use link that we email to you.
• If you buy without an account, we create one for you with the email address you give at checkout and email you a sign-in link, so your reports and any unused checks are kept safe.
• Keep your password private and your email account secure, because sign-in links are sent by email. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account.
• Each report has its own private link. Anyone you share that link with can open the report, so share it with care.
• You can delete your account at any time in your account settings. This deletes your reminders and any unused checks and cannot be undone, so use your checks first, or ask for a refund if you are still within 14 days of buying them. We keep the order records we must keep by law, as our privacy notice explains.

Prices and payment

Prices are shown in pounds sterling and are the final price you pay, including any VAT. You pay the price shown at checkout. If we change our prices, the change does not affect anything you have already bought.

You pay by card through Stripe, our payment provider. We never see or store your full card details. Your contract with us starts when your payment is confirmed, and we email you a receipt.

Please check the registration and vehicle details carefully before you buy, especially if you used the plate scanner.

Using your checks

• Each check gives you one full history check on one vehicle.
• Any check you have paid for but not yet used stays valid for 24 months from the date you bought it, and you can use it on any vehicle. Your unused checks are kept in your account.
• When you run a check, we use the check that is due to expire soonest.
• Unused checks expire after 24 months. They have no cash value and cannot be exchanged for money, except for a refund of unused checks as described below.
• Checks added with a gift or partner code work in the same way and stay valid for 24 months from the day you redeem the code. They cannot be exchanged for money or refunded.

Cancellation and refunds

Full history checks

A full history check is digital content. At checkout, you ask us to start supplying it straight away and you acknowledge that your 14-day right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 ends once supply starts. This means that once we have started to produce a report, you cannot cancel it.

Checks you have not used

You can ask for a refund of any checks you have paid for but not used, as long as you ask within 14 days of the day you bought them. This mostly applies to packs: when you buy a pack of 3 or 10 checks, supply of each check starts only when you use it on a vehicle.

We work out the refund as the price you paid, divided by the number of checks you bought, multiplied by the number you have not used, rounded to the nearest penny.

For example, if you bought 10 full checks for £29.99 and have used one, we would refund the 9 unused checks: £26.99.

After 14 days, unused checks cannot be refunded, but you can still use them until they expire.

To ask for a refund, email hello@vettly.co.uk from the email address on your account and tell us which purchase it is about. We refund to the card you paid with, within 14 days of receiving your request.

If we cannot produce a report

If a report cannot be produced, for example because no record exists for the registration, we return the check to your account automatically so you can use it on another vehicle. A returned check counts as unused, so you can also ask for a refund within 14 days of buying it.

If a report is wrong

If you think a report is materially wrong because of a data error, contact us. We will investigate, and refund you where appropriate. Our data sources page explains who corrects each kind of record.

Your legal rights

Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, digital content must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. If it is not, you may be entitled to a repair or replacement, or to some or all of your money back. Nothing in these terms affects your legal rights. Citizens Advice can tell you more about them.

What a report can and cannot tell you

• Our data comes from government and third-party sources. We pass it on as we receive it, and we cannot guarantee that it is complete, up to date or free from errors.
• Some events never reach these records. For example, damage repaired without an insurance claim will not show as a write-off.
• The Vettly Score is an automated summary of the records. It is not advice, and it is not a guarantee of the condition or value of a vehicle.
• Valuations are estimates. What a vehicle sells for depends on its condition, history, specification and the market.
• Running costs and vehicle tax are estimates at the rates shown on the report.
• A report is not insurance or a warranty.

A report helps you decide, but the decision to buy, sell or keep a vehicle is yours.

Using Vettly fairly

Reports are for your own use, to help you decide whether to buy, sell or keep a vehicle. You must not:

• scrape, copy or download data from the site in bulk;
• use bots, scripts or any other automated means to run lookups;
• resell, license or publish report data, or use it to build another product or database;
• use a report, or anything else from Vettly, to identify, track, contact or harass a keeper or anyone else;
• try to get around our security, rate limits or payment system, or access accounts or data that are not yours;
• use Vettly for anything unlawful.

We may limit how many lookups can be made in a period of time, and we may suspend or close an account that breaks these rules.

The website, its design and software, and the way we present and score vehicle data belong to us or the people we license them from. Vehicle data remains subject to the rights of the sources it comes from.

Our responsibility to you

This section applies if you are a consumer. If you use Vettly for business, the next section applies instead.

We are responsible for foreseeable loss. If we break these terms or fail to use reasonable care and skill, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result. Loss or damage is foreseeable if it is obvious that it will happen, or if both you and we knew it might happen when the contract was made. We are not responsible for loss or damage that is not foreseeable.

What we never limit. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for breach of your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law.

Our limit. Apart from that, because a report is a low-cost check of records and not an inspection of the vehicle, our total liability to you for any report is limited to the amount you paid for it. For a check from a pack, that is its share of the pack price.

Business losses. We are not liable to you for business losses, such as loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption or loss of business opportunity.

Events outside our control. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as an outage at the DVLA, the DVSA or our data supplier. If the free check is unavailable, please try again later. If a paid report cannot be produced, we return the check to your account.

If you use Vettly for business

If you use Vettly in the course of a business, for example as a motor trader, the following applies instead of the consumer terms above:

• The consumer rights described in these terms, including the 14-day right to cancel, do not apply to you. You can still ask for a refund of paid checks you have not used within 14 days of buying them.
• We are not liable for any loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or anticipated savings, or for any indirect or consequential loss.
• Our total liability to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise, is limited to the total amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim.
• Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law.
• The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute.

Changes to Vettly and these terms

• We may change, suspend or withdraw parts of Vettly, for example if a data source changes or stops. If we stop offering full history checks, we will refund any unused checks you paid for.
• We may update these terms, for example to reflect changes in the law or in our service. The terms in force when you make a purchase apply to that purchase. The date of the latest version is shown on this page.

Other legal terms

• We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation, for example if the business is sold. We will tell you if this happens, and it will not reduce your rights.
• Only you and we have rights under these terms. Nobody else can enforce them.
• If a court decides that part of these terms is unlawful, the rest stays in force.
• If we do not enforce our rights straight away, we can still enforce them later.

Law and courts

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are a consumer, you can bring legal proceedings in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland, you can also bring proceedings in the Scottish courts, and if you live in Northern Ireland, in the courts of Northern Ireland.

Questions and complaints

If you have a question about these terms, email hello@vettly.co.uk or use our contact form. If something has gone wrong, our complaints procedure explains what we will do and how quickly.