[Polestar Pete]

When I bought my car from an independent last month, the process was:

* Paid £500 to secure the car while negotiating
* Sent dealer details of my expiring PCP agreement (settlement figures from the finance company)
* Sent dealer honest description of my part-ex and got an unseen valuation that they stuck to post handover
* Sent dealer deposit when happy to proceed
* Applied for finance and agreed handover date
* On handover date, taxed new car after visual inspection
* Dealer contacted finance company and funds released

Handover complete, I drove away. The whole process was a lot easier than sitting in an office spending over an our filling out endless forms.

The two-week cooling off period introduced a bit of uncertainty for me because they processed the V5C on my old car immediately, but didn't sort out the V5C on the new car until the two weeks were up - they told me that they didn't want to add an unnecessary owner onto the history and the fact they did that on my old car didn't really occur to them.

In all, the process worked fine, but do clarify the situation with both V5Cs so that you fully understand the implications of adding owners and time periods. To my mind (being fair), both V5Cs should be processed after the two weeks.