Used car adverts have a language of their own, and most of it exists to make a problem sound smaller than it is. Here's what the common phrases actually mean, which ones carry legal weight, and what to ask when you see them.
What does "spares or repairs" mean?
That the seller is telling you the car isn't fit to drive away and is being sold for its parts or for someone to fix. It isn't a legal category or an official status, just a description, and nobody checks it.
What it usually means in practice: no MOT, a known mechanical fault, accident damage, or a car the seller can't be bothered to put right. Treat the price as the price of the problem plus the car, not as a bargain. You'll also need a plan for moving it, because a car with no MOT can only be driven "to or from somewhere to be repaired" or "to a pre-arranged MOT test", and driving one otherwise risks a fine of up to £1,000.
The phrase doesn't get the seller off the hook for what they've told you, either. Under the Sale of Goods Act 1979 the goods have to "correspond with the description", and that applies to private sellers too. Selling a car as spares or repairs is honest. Selling one as a runner that isn't is a different thing entirely.
It's also a phrase our own data watches: "spares or repairs" wording appears as a cover for 53 of the 736 faults in our database.
What does "HPI clear" mean in an advert?
That somebody ran a provenance check on the car at some point and it came back with nothing recorded. It's a claim about a piece of paper, not a status the car carries, and "HPI" here is being used the way people say Hoover for any vacuum cleaner.
Three questions settle it. Which check, done when, and covering what? A check from eighteen months and two keepers ago tells you nothing about today, and the cheaper tiers leave finance, the write-off detail or the mileage record out altogether. Ask to see the report itself, with the registration and the date on it.
Worth knowing: a clear result is a statement about paperwork, not about the car. What an HPI check won't tell you covers the gap, and the best HPI check in the UK covers who sells what.
What does "sold as seen" mean, and is it binding?
It means the seller wants you to accept the car as it stands, faults included. Whether it actually protects them depends entirely on who's selling.
From a trader, it's worth very little. Consumer law gives you rights that a line in an advert can't remove, including a 30-day right to reject a car that isn't of satisfactory quality. "Sold as seen", "no refunds" and "no warranty" don't override that.
From a private seller, it means more. The duty that goods are of satisfactory quality applies where the seller "sells goods in the course of a business", which a private seller isn't doing. What still applies is the description: the car has to be what they said it was. So "sold as seen" covers the worn clutch you could have found. It doesn't cover the seller telling you it had a full service history when it didn't.
In both cases it's the same practical advice: the phrase tells you to inspect harder, not that you've lost every right you had.
What does FSH or "full service history" mean?
It should mean a complete record of every scheduled service the car was due, with proof. In adverts it means anything from a fully stamped book with matching invoices to a folder with two receipts in it.
The things that turn it from a claim into a fact:
- Stamps and invoices together. A stamp says someone opened the book, an invoice says what was actually done and at what mileage.
- Digital records. Most franchised dealers stopped stamping books years ago, so ask for a printout from the main dealer network.
- The gaps. Compare the service dates against the MOT mileages. Two years of no servicing on a car that covered 20,000 miles is a gap, whatever the book says.
"Part service history" or "PSH" is the honest version of the same thing, and it means exactly what it says. Neither phrase tells you whether the big-ticket job on that engine has been done, which is why buying a car with no service history starts with the timing belt rather than the paperwork.
"It's an easy fix" and "just needs a sensor"
These are the phrases that carry the most weight in our own data, because they're how expensive faults get described by people who'd rather not talk about them. Of the 736 faults in our database, 118 list "easy fix" wording as a cover for them, and 64 list some version of "just needs a sensor". Another 34 come with "just needs a service" and 25 with "just needs a software update".
Those faults aren't a mystery, either. They sit on the model pages with what they cost, so Ford Focus known faults and Vauxhall Corsa known faults will usually tell you what the seller is describing before you've asked them.
That doesn't make the claim false. Sensors do fail, and some warning lights really are cheap. It makes it unverified: the seller is offering you a diagnosis rather than a repair, and a diagnosis that's never been paid for.
The question that sorts it: who told you that, and have you got the diagnostic report? If a garage has plugged it in, there's paperwork with a fault code on it. If nobody has, the phrase is a guess, and you're the one funding the difference between a sensor and the thing the sensor was complaining about.
On a diesel first used on or after 1 July 2008, a light that's on now is also an MOT problem in its own right: the tester fails the car if the engine malfunction indicator lamp indicates a malfunction. On a petrol car it isn't an automatic failure, which makes it easier to ignore and no cheaper to fix.
"New clutch", "just serviced" and "recently had work done"
Recent work is genuinely good news, and it's the easiest claim in the advert to verify, because work leaves paper. Ask for the invoice, and read three things on it: the date, the mileage and the garage's name.
What's worth a second thought is why the work was needed. A new clutch at 60,000 miles is maintenance. A new clutch, a new turbo and a new EGR valve in the same six months is a car that's been fighting something. Our data records "just needs a clutch" wording against 27 separate faults, several of which aren't the clutch.
"Just serviced" means an oil change until proven otherwise. On some engines that matters a great deal: on a wet belt engine the oil is part of the belt's health, and a service that skipped the belt is not the service you need.
"Cash only", "no timewasters" and "quick sale"
None of these is proof of anything, and plenty of honest sellers write them. What they do is narrow your options in the seller's favour.
- Cash only removes the paper trail and the buyer protection that comes with a card or a bank transfer. It's also the shape every deposit scam takes, which is part of why checking a Facebook Marketplace advert needs its own method.
- No timewasters usually just means the seller has had a rough week of messages. Read it as mood, not meaning.
- Quick sale, moving abroad is the classic story attached to a price that's too good, because it explains both the discount and the hurry. Treat urgency as a reason to slow down.
What does "trade sale" mean?
That the seller is in the trade and is selling the car unprepared, usually because the cost of putting it right is more than they want to spend on it. Sometimes it's an honest way to sell a tired part-exchange cheaply.
The label doesn't change your rights, though. If the seller is a business and you're buying as a consumer, consumer law applies whatever the advert calls the sale, including that 30-day right to reject. What you should take from the phrase is the practical bit: nobody has inspected, serviced or warranted this car, so budget as though everything on it is due.
"Unfinished project", "needs TLC" and "garaged"
The first two are the same admission at different volumes. "Unfinished project" means somebody started work, ran out of money, patience or skill, and stopped, so you're buying a car plus whatever state they left it in. "Needs TLC" is the softer version, and its meaning ranges from scruffy to structurally unsound.
"Garaged" is the only one of the three that's a positive claim, and it's unverifiable. It's worth something on a convertible or a classic and nothing at all on a five-year-old hatchback, and the MOT history will tell you more about how the car's been kept than the word will.
The short ones
| Phrase | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| "Drives well" | The seller likes how it drives. It's an opinion, not a record | Read the MOT advisories instead |
| "Minor issue" | A fault the seller has decided isn't serious | Ask for a diagnosis and a quote |
| "Engine light on" | An MOT failure item, cause unknown | Get the fault code before agreeing a price |
| "Genuine mileage" | Nothing on its own. Every seller says it | Check the MOT mileage readings |
| "Px to clear" | A part-exchange the dealer wants gone, unprepared | Budget as for a trade sale |
| "Ono" or "ovno" | There's room in the price | Use the faults you found to fill it |
How our scan reads these phrases
The honest bit first: everything above is general knowledge, and this page gives it away because a decoder is only useful if it's free. We hold the same DVSA MOT history as everyone else, and the same registers for provenance.
What the scan adds is the pairing. It doesn't tell you what "just needs a sensor" means in general, it tells you what it means on this car: the phrase goes into the report next to the known faults for that model and engine, the MOT advisory history, and the mileage readings. "Genuine mileage" stops being a claim and becomes a line that either matches the MOT record or doesn't. "Just serviced" meets a service history with a two-year hole in it. That pairing is the whole product, and no registration lookup can do it, because a plate lookup has never seen the advert.
The free scan gives you the verdict, a risk score and the single biggest thing to worry about, with no card and no password. The Smart Check goes further and explains every finding, prices the known faults for that exact car, and turns the lot into the questions to put to the seller.
What it can't do is tell you whether the seller is lying. It can only tell you where the wording and the records disagree, which in practice is where most of them come unstuck.
So if there's an advert open in another tab, run it through the free scan before you message the seller. If you want the costs and the seller questions, the same report upgrades on the same link without being re-run, so starting free costs you nothing either way.
