Reply With QuoteYep, you can buy "legal plates" which are sold as show plates and therefore don't have to send in your documents - cheaper than say Halfords and easy to buy online
as long as they are "legal" I don't think you are breaking the law
For some reason I keep on getting sponsored adverts for registration plates in my Facebook news feed. I’m not mentioning names but the link takes me to an official supplier where you have the option to order the plate in any format, incorrectly spaced etc and have to give no details at all- it appears they will come as show plates, what I can’t ascertain without ordering any is that if it’s possible to order legal looking spaced plates without handing over any details?
FFF
Yep, you can buy "legal plates" which are sold as show plates and therefore don't have to send in your documents - cheaper than say Halfords and easy to buy online
as long as they are "legal" I don't think you are breaking the law
So my reg will show with correct spacing etc but the bs markings, makers details etc Postcode won’t be on them?Originally Posted by BillN
I have bought from eBay without doc’s and they came in legal form.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I bought “legal” showplates for my Mustang a number of years ago As it was obviously a legal plate the company asked for proof of entitlement to display it on a vehicle. All I had to do was send them a scan of the appropriate paperwork.
FFS- how can that be ever right, I don’t mean you , the maker!
you can have "show plates" in any form, including a plate visually conforming to the law
Dunno - I just ordered them!
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Totally wrong- I always assumed that show plates looked like they were obviously show plates.
A plate is a plate. Whether it is legal or not depends on what is printed on it.
To add to my post above I bought two sets of plates from a showplates company. One set had MUSTANG on them the second a valid UK reg number.
They were happy to print and send the first set but required me to prove I was entitled to show the second set before they would fulfill that part of the order. Both were identical in size and shape and merely differed on what was printed on them.
I got some square plates for an old Land Rover. They came from a company in the Republic of Ireland IIRC and were half the price I would have paid here. They didn't ask for any legal entitlement, I guess they didn't care.
Sent through the ether by diddling with radio waves
ROI may differ to the UK.
https://www.gov.uk/displaying-number...plates-made-up
Which to my mind is correct- showing proof is right surely but to supply a plate that looks legal without any docs is wrong.
There is a weird legal anomaly in this. If you go buy plates from a shop you have to show paperwork, online you don't. There are hundreds of companies out there that will make up plates for you, in whatever format you want, with no questions asked.
Personally I've always found it odd that the DVLA makes a fortune (for literally doing nothing) encouraging people to buy private plates, but then tries to prevent them displaying them as personalised.
So clever my foot fell off.
I’ve bought legal plates with BS and postcode markings without showing documentation.
Not quite correct. The online companies that follow the rules insist on a scan of proof of ownership and proof of who you are.
Not all online companies follow the rules though, and as you say will send out legal plates without proof of entitlement.
The full ins-and-outs are in this DVLA PDF
You have quite a bit of leeway for size and spacing of letters and plate itself - you just need to sit and work it out. Which can be a faff.
You can have borders, extra (small) text, and even facets to the letters, but the font is fixed.
To be fully legal you need BS number, maker and postcode... That said I've had plates made for mine and the wife's car without either that are technically legal sizewise but also a fair bit smaller than dealerships tend to fit - my car has been thru 2 MOTs without comment; neither vehicle has attracted any interest from The Man...
It’s easy to see why 6500 plus people each year have their plates cloned.
Registration plate suppliers use standard sized plates, i.e. the size that accommodates the latest format of letters/numbers, which merans that if your registration consists of a lesser numer of characters then you end up with a physically larger plate than necessary.
These are the legal requirements:
- characters must be 79mm tall
- characters (except the number 1 or letter I) must be
50mm wide- the character stroke (the thickness of the black print)
must be 14mm- the space between characters must be 11mm
- the space between the age identifier and the random
letters must be 33mm- the margins at the top, bottom and side of the plate
must be 11mm- vertical space between the age identifier and the
random letters must be 19mm.
Companies such as this will provide legal plates that are the physically smallest you can have: https://www.jdmplates.co.uk/home/sma...number-plates/
R
Last edited by ralphy; 29th April 2020 at 21:56.
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
I bought legal pressed metal plates online and had to send scan of documents before they would dispatch them.
Plenty of online companies use the show plate angle to get out of checking paper work and also they can’t be blamed when plod pulls you over for displaying illegal plates. Not that I think you would get pulled unless you were taking the piss with spacing, size or font.
I'm not too concerned with illegal spacing so long as each letter or number is readable by a witness if the car is leaving the scene of a crime. In fact, having it spell a word might make it easier for a witness to remember.
What concerns me is some herbert buying a load of plates for cloning purposes.
This exactly which was the reason I asked the questions, I knew the legislation with being in the motor trade for many years but I’ve never tried to order show plates. For me, show plates should carry the same requirements as normal plates
One of my cars wears show plates all the time. Why, because I needed new plates but didn't want the new script as its an older car. But if you buy "proper" plates then you can only get the post 01 (maybe) script which for mine would look odd I think. I then bought another set as I bought a reg no too. I kept the original supplying garage name but changed the logo to one for the car not the garage.
No one is ever going to look twice at it as it is the correct font for the age of car. I suppose if someone was reaaly bored they might surmise that the registration number had been added to the car so the plate should be newer but then they don't know when it was added.
The chap that made them has all sorts of "old" dealer names and scripts so you can match the original number plate from when your car was new.
Anyway not a problem ultimately and it's what I wanted.
A number plate is just a few self-adhesive characters stuck onto a reflective plastic backing, and (possibly) covered with clear plastic. The equipment for producing a plate is just a simple press, which I guess costs well under £100 to buy.
Any self-respecting cloning gang will be making their own plates rather than buying them on eBay.
^Why would they need to when they can order them online?
Because ordering them online would leave a possible audit trail - at a minimum, there has to be a postal address that the plates are sent to. There would also be a delay involved, whereas with their own equipment they can have the plates ready within minutes of identifying a suitable candidate to clone.
They make money from the sale, and money from the fine. What's odd? ;-)
Fair enough, PK. Good point, well made.
You're correct a trail would exist however it would mean nothing, a lot of these clones are done to avoid insurance, mot and parking fines and not by hardened criminals looking for a getaway vehicle. I could identify a similar looking vehicle to mine now in another town 30 miles away, go to one of thousands of these online outlets who sell legal looking plates without docs and have a them in my hands ready to stick on the next day. Where would the police start to look for the transaction of the plate? Would they be bothered or have the resources to search every one of the companies on by one until they found someone who supplied them? Where is the audit trail?
Plates must have the maker's details on them, and they should prove that they have ascertained that you are the legal operator of the vehicle (V5 doc)
So - they are 'legal-ish' in respect of physical appearance, but are not legal.
Never bothered me for trailer plates.
I don't see ROI mentioned anywhere in that link. Could be my eyesight though
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As a gov.uk page why would you expect to read about ROI? It is the UK position on number plates.I don't see ROI mentioned anywhere in that link. Could be my eyesight though
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I assumed that when you quoted sish101 post on the issue that you were showing us ROI rules as it seems we know what the rules are for UK. My bad.
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Sorry, was just providing a link to an official source showing UK rules. Not yet found anything as clear cut for ROI.
Yeah I see that nowNI is different to UK. We don't need to display manutacture postcode or whatever it is. Don't think BS either.
I order 3D acrylic plates. No questions asked. Made in NI and delivered in NI.
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I suppose the question is
How easy is it to clone another car's registration plates?
the answer is, yes it's easy as you can buy legal looking plates online, (as show plates), and do not have to prove that you own or are the vehicle's keeper
the only link back to the purchaser in such a case would be the online order/CC details and the police/authorities would have to cannot many such number plate suppliers to find out this information, which in many cases I would doubt that they would
That's not how the police would work.
When you order a number plate through eBay or Amazon, you need to inform the seller of the number that you want, usually through their messaging systems. All that law enforcement need to do is to ask eBay/Amazon/whoever for a list of all of those numbers. Or, if they suspect a particular seller of committing an offence, they might just go through all their records to find everybody that they have sold a plate to. And how would you know whether Franky Four Brain Cells' Number Plate Emporium on eBay is a real number plate seller on eBay, or actually a sting operation being run by the local plod?
Once law enforcement have the delivery address and the payment method, then they can quickly get everything else they need, especially as the people cloning single plates are not exactly at the higher end of the criminal mastermind scale.
Anyway, my comments were mostly geared towards multiple offenders rather than one-off cloners. And anybody can make their own number plate at home with a minimum of equipment (it's just some letters and numbers stuck on a bit of reflective plastic).
Ill ignore the obvious insult and would say that you’ve made yourself look incredibly stupid with all of that rubbish.
Yeh there are sites through eBay amazon and alike but there’s also multiple makers that have their own websites. How’s your audit trail going to work if they’ve simply gone to a website which there are hundreds of and made a plate online and had it sent to an address?
I had a visit from the police after the number on my S4 had been cloned and used in robberies around Birmingham. They came to ask me whether I'd been in the area but later they said they knew it wasn't my car as the clone had the Euro flag on the plates, mine didn't.
They seem puzzled how the number was obtained until I told them that Audi and many other people leave the plates visible on their sales website so it's easy to choose a make/model/colour and find a number to clone. This information seemed to be news to them. I'd only bought the car a few weeks earlier so that's probably where they got the number from.
You really don't have the first clue how law enforcement (not just the police, but also anti-terrorism, immigration, etc) work in the online world, do you?
The vast majority of online number plate sales are through the big organisations (primarily eBay and Amazon). There will be a small number (most certainly not hundreds) of other makers, but as a buyer of plates you would have no way of knowing whether any given supplier is under surveillance by or even, as I said, actually being run by, law enforcement.
And my initial point was that no cloning gang would take the risk (and inconvenience) of buying online, when they can make up their own plates at minimal cost and effort.
Hogwash- where are your credentials to know how many number plate sales go through large organisations, somewhat coincidence you happen to know such precise facts, you’ve simply made facts up just to create an argument.
I know you’ll now spend an hour trying to find a smidgen of proof to back up your theory but please don’t bother.
Simple fact remains that you can go online and buy any plate which is wrong, whether you understand that or not I don’t care.
Btw I never mentioned eBay.
Last edited by Franky Four Fingers; 30th April 2020 at 11:03.
I had a similar experience many years ago. Someone had stolen a ZZR1100 and it was running around with the same number as mine.
A visit from the police to establish where I’d bought mine from and to check the chassis number put me in the clear.
I've experienced having my vehicle cloned and it caused me a lot of time (and money) trying to deal with the outcome.
First I knew of it was getting a NIP through the post for speeding on my motorbike. The location, date and time stated didn't add-up to me as I was elsewhere then so I wrote to the Safety Camera Partnership telling them so asking for the photographic evidence.
They replied saying that I first had to send them a photo of my bike so they could compare it with their. I did that and they replied back saying that in their opinion it was my bike - and if it wasn't me then then I had to tell them who was riding it on that day.
I wrote back saying that as my bike was in a locked garage all day it must have been someone else unknown to me on another bike. Next thing that happened was I get an unannounced visit from an SCP employee asking to examine my bike. I showed it to him it and off he went.
Next thing that happened was I receive a summons stating that:
So I went to court. Prosecuting solicitor said his bit and produced the employee who came to see my bike, I said my defence, magistrates retired to deliberate and finally the bench returned with a 'not guilty' verdict.I was to be prosecuted for 'failing to supply information'
That the penalty for said offence was a fine of up £1000, endorsement of driving licence and/or disqualification from driving,
That, if found guilty, I could then also be prosecuted for the speeding offence (up to £1000 fine, 3-6 points on my licence)
There was the potential for a prosecution of 'attempting to pervert the course of justice'
And, given the above, I could 'reconsider my position and supply the information required of me by law' - which would only attract the '3 points and £60' penalty....
And that's just the abridged version...
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Again you’ve made that up- it would appear whilst some cloning is done for more severe crimes such as bank jobs-drugs etc a lot are done to circumvent tax, mot insurance and congestion charges.
Simple fact remains that anybody can make their own number plates at home - there's no need for them to take the risk, cost or inconvenience of buying them online.
Sounds like a real nightmare. Did you ever get the chance to review the pics of the other bike, and if so how close was it in comparison with yours?
A friend of a friend of a friend once got screwed out of a business (I don’t remember the details) so he hired a car of the exact spec and colour as the other guy, had a matching plate made up and commenced driving past as many speed cameras as he could, at license loss speeds, for the weekend of the hire. No idea of the outcome of that, but must have made life difficult for a while.
Last edited by NickGaters; 30th April 2020 at 11:30.
Give me the data to prove that then, tell me how many cloned plates were used for serious offences and how many were used by some scroat looking to circumvent mot tax and insurance laws. Why would some jack the lad invest in acrylics, numbers and a roller ( assuming he was doing it old school ) when he could click online and get them sent to him?
Surely by your definition the transaction to supply those products to make the plates could also be audited.....or haven't you followed that through your thought process Sherlock?
Last edited by Franky Four Fingers; 30th April 2020 at 12:14.
Anyone can buy stick-on letters. Anyone can buy reflective plastic. Ergo, anybody can make a number plate at home. QED.
I apologise for calling you Frankie Four Brain Cells - I was obviously vastly overestimating your capabilities.
Yeh you’re right but so what, just because you can doesn’t mean they do......again where’s your proof?
Seems to me you’re just arguing a point which you have no interest in....btw what’s your credentials seeing as you know soo much about ant-terrorism, law enforcement and all things number plate related which includes specific data regarding this particular thread?
I would have thought it extremely unlikely that there are more than a hand full of private people who can make up "show plates" at home that would pass for a legal plates
OK there are quite a few smaller motor dealers that still have the equipment, but these guys are in 'the trade" - and only the shady side of "the trade" would risk producing what would be false plates
I would think that the vast majority of cloned plates now come from the web and have done for some time
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