Any Experience of using vehicle history checking services?

[Mikebentley]

Currently looking to buy a Fiat 500 S 1.2 for my son to learn to drive in and then be his first car. Budget of £5k. We don’t currently have a manual car he could learn in.

Anyway shocked by the variation in prices of similar cars and aware the Fiat 500 is essentially an easy car to be written off for trivial damage by the insurance industry. This I believe is due to hire car costs etc it’s just cheaper to write them off. As a consequence they seem to be being repaired by body shops and offered for sale as parts are very cheap with no mention of their Cat S/N status.

So this leads me on to my question.
Has anyone experience of using services such as Carvertical etc to check the history of used cars and what would you recommend I use. I need a car in 5/6 weeks and would prefer something that lets me make checks on multiple cars without costing me hundreds.

Thanks for anyone that replies.

[sixor8]

Run the reg through Autotrader as if you're going to sell it, and it'll tell you if it's category written off. Then just don't complete the sale process.

Not 100% perhaps but a fast way to check many cars. And if one is, it may be worth buying at a much reduced price anyway.

[ZX10R NIN]

Use VCheck.