Buying A Used Bike? Get A Bike History Report First

Buying a car or a bike is an investment in an asset and like all assets you should take due care to ensure that your money does not go to waste. However, unlike fixed assets that are more stable, buying moveable assets like cars and bikes is no piece of cake and you have to be sure that it is not a stolen one being palmed off to you or that there are no loans outstanding on it.

Fortunately, there is a very easy way to solve this issue. Get a bike history report through a PPSR search from the system of the Government of Australia and you are assured that any vehicle including a bike is genuine, clear of any debt, and is not a flood-damaged or a salvaged one.

What do you get from a bike history report? Apart from knowing the condition of the bike, it also provides a lot of other critical details such as warranty, recalls, theft, claims, insurance coverage, registrations, and whether there is any financial lien on the bike. With these details in your hand, you can be assured that your bike has a clear title and that the seller is the actual owner of the bike.

Let’s see in detail the repercussions of not getting a bike history report and paying in full for the bike. The two most important things to look for are whether the bike is stolen and whether a financial institution has a lien on the vehicle.

In the first instance, when you take the bike for a change of ownership to your name, the authorities, who have the relevant records with them will immediately repossess the bike from you regardless of whether you have made full payment for it.

In the second case too, the owner has to make full payment of the loan outstanding against it before the title can be transferred to your name. At best, if you like the bike and want to buy it, you can offer to pay off the dues and adjust the same from the final price.

The question now is how do you get a bike history report?

A report can be had through the VIN of the bike. VIN is short for Vehicle Identification Number and is unique to every bike, similar to the fingerprint of a human being, no two can ever be the same. VIN is a combination of 17 alphabets and numbers each denoting one aspect of the vehicle – model, year of manufacture, country of origin, and more. In short, through a VIN, you get the complete details of a bike.

To get a bike history report, visit a specialized website in this field, submit an application with VIN, make the required payment and hit the SUBMIT button. Within seconds a concise report will be sent via SMS and a detailed report by email.