Motorists of New Zealand are under threat
09-Apr-2010 News
From Jan 2011 onwards the NZTA is about to charge for every access to the Motor Vehicle Register for basic information.
As consumers and voters, we are horrified at this proposal. At present the basic information from the NZTA database is available through CarJam.
CarJam passes this information on as a public service for free. For example, you can currently find out if a car has been reported stolen or if the odometer has been tampered with at no charge and lots more!
This service will end under the NZTA’s announcement.
The NZTA claims that these proposed new charges are necessary for cost recovery. However, this information has already been paid for by the public in the form of licensing fees, registration fees, WOF and COF costs. It belongs to the motorists of New Zealand. We do not have to pay for it twice.
Crime and fraud statistics are high and this proposal will undoubtedly result in an increase in ordinary people getting ripped off.
Email the Minister (from the front page), sign a petition, place your comments below and continue to FB about it.
Please note this is an update to a previous announcement.
The UK one actually tells you absolutely nothing useful at all, it just has : –
Year of manufacture.
Date of first reg.
Engine size.
Fuel type.
All the above information apart from Date of 1st registration you would (or should) know if you were interested in buying a car of this type.
It has an entry labeled “Date of Liability” I have no idea what that means (insurance due date?).
And it it just says License not due.
There are no historical mileage figures that you can check.
No MoT (WoF) information at all that you can check to see if it’s been “off the road” (SORN) for any lenth of time in the past.
You have no idea if it’s MoT’d, no idea if it has 12 months tax or 1 day’s tax left to run.
It falls well short of the type of excellent free info obtainable from CarJam and there really is no comparison what so ever of the 2 systems, CarJam is far superior in every respect.
I have heard of some real num nut decisions but this one takes the cake
And I have just checked out 5 of my old cars on the DVLA’s UK version of CarJam that I sold before I emigrated to NZ three years ago…1 has the right details, 2 have the engine size wrongly stated, 1 there is NO record of what so ever and 1 that I officially scrapped is still on the database but it says it isn’t taxed and the liability(?) is 01-01-2008, what ever that means…
So what little data there is was wrong or just not there for 4 out of my 5 cars….
I rely on the access of free data checks when purchasing a vehicle and before serious enquiries are made into any vehicle they are all checked for dodgy mileage at Car jam.
I strongly oppose the move to make this now FREE service, chargeable, this would mean when purchasing a vehicle privately hundred$ could be spent just getting accurate information on the vehicles before the next step is taken.
If NZTA has the interests of the motoring public and the aid it gives the motor industry in general (ie chassis numbers, etc for parts and quotes on parts) they would provide these details free as is the case now on Car Jam.
I think that NZTA is trying to capture $30 a pop (on it’s MotoWeb site) from everyone who is just trying to buy a vehicle that is not dodgy……disgusting NZTA… Well I suppose they have to pay for the new name changes that happen every 2 years.
Keep Fighting CARJAM!!
Are our taxes not enough to cover dole expenditure anymore?
It is more than enough. We at CarJam even offered to run a mirror database of the Motor Vehicle Register. They refused.
Where is our free country gone…??? We need labour government
F**K NZTA WHAT ARE THEY THINKING! THIS IS THE MOST USEFUL WED SITE IVE FOUND SO FAR!
Keep carjam we need it, it is part of the democratic system, keep your hands off, leave carjam alone or else!!!!
The NZTA are shooting themselves in the foot over this – the information that is on Carjam is a godsend for anyone who has a car, or is looking for one.
I for one appreciate tha great service supplied by carjam, I have been looking at a particular vehicle only to find that at 15,000kms the odometer was replaced or near zeroed,however it is for sale at a reading 20,000kms less than what it should be,this is important when regarding service intervals-history (i am no longer interested),I may not have found this information if not for car jam,
i`m curoius at how the 16cent price figure was arrived at? and why nzta feel the need to start charging? and how much is carjam going to have to charge in order to cover the extra admistration costs if any?, as we pay for more detailed imformation anyway,yes i do understand and agree with the changes with regard to owner privacy, it is the vehicle i`m checking not the names,but the numbers of owners etc that is of interest.
CarJam… What do you need from us to go towards a petition or what ever means you decide use to fight this issue with?
What can we, as concerned citizens do to help you?
Gaz, Thanks. By Monday night we should have a plan for action. Ask all people you know to register on CarJam and/or become friends on FB and/or follow us on Twitter. We are going to contact everyone on email list (registered users and customers), FB friends and Twitter followers about what we are to do.
As a mechanic this we website is very helpful and enables me to get details to order parts quickly and easily, this will affect all my customers. I also feel that the website is very beneficial for people purchasing cars and feel that closing down the site will cause problems.
Thanks
Ben
Ben, CarJam will not close but NZTA will start charging us for free service which we will unfortunately have to pass on to the consumers.
This will be such a shame to loose this access to basic information when looking up on a vehicle, weather its to buy or just get parts for it, Let alone give the criminals more to hide behind. I say just leave it as its is and charge for personal information as you require it. I have used this site to purchase information on purchasing a couple of cars without even looking at them.
My father advised me to use this site when he found out I was looking for another car.
I am a single mum with limited cash and little knowledge of cars so having CARJAM volunteer free info is a GIFT for us and no doubt many others.
At least this way I can make a more informed decision regarding buying a used vehicle.
I just want to find a safe car using resources I can afford!!!!!
As my 16yr old daughter would say “CAR JAM ROCKS”
Mind turning a blind eye so i can scrape the db via your site?
Out of intrest, how many records are in it?
Hi David, No scraping is not allowed. Sorry. Every request will go to NZTA (and it’s already a bottleneck). This will effect other users. Thanks.
Keep the basic information free NZTA!
It makes it so much easier to spot irregularities in cars (odometers or unauthorised turbos).
It is also very helpful for finding out basic information about a car, which often even the owner isn’t sure of (e.g. engine size)
Also useful for finding out what type of parts are required for servicing and repairs.
READ THIS to save confusing yourself , the common thread info about vehicles will still be available, Carjam makes money from your more indepth inquirys, the cant do that from jan 1st 2011, so the revenue they require will come from your simple vehicle inquirys, why they could not have been clear about this at the outset is they would appear to be the villan here, simply put anyone can apply to release this data to the public and there is a cost, this could be offset by advertising on the site, but the revenue that carjam has been used to will dry up in Jan, and as a business, they would like to keep making the same money without the backlash, they will NOT being charged anymore for the information they currently get.
Thank you Steve but you are incorrect. The free information we show on CarJam is free for us at the moment. From Jan 2011, we are being charged 16c per every query. It’s $240/months for 1.5 million free searches we deliver to the public and industry today. No advertising can cover this. Get your facts right mate!
Hey Anton, aside from the rest of the comment the idea of advertising isn’t a bad one, I mean really how much CAN you actually get from it? It could all be industry related, big name car retailers and motor vehicle organisations etc…I’m sure you must have researched the possibility to dismiss it offhand – what do the figures look like?
Amanda, you can maybe get a max of $10/1,000 impressions if you are lucky. This means 1 request gets a funding of 1c. We need 16c 🙂
Anton, that should be $24000, not $240.
It’s $240,000, ie $240K 🙁
oh and I forgot to say, someone commented earlier that you could run credit accounts like Trademe does – I would be happy to pay per enquiry. If we were all paying say 20c per enquiry then you would wind up in credit which could pay your admin for setting up the credit accounts.
Yes, this is one of the solutions we are considering at the moment. Unfortunately, we will have to add up cost of credit card transactions etc but it will surely be competitive. Business users are already enjoying the benefits of this but at the moment one needs to top up $100.
What are they thinking of? I use this almost daily just to get the basic information. I find it hard to decipher my boss’s handwriting but as long as he writes the rego in correctly, I can go to carjam to look up what the vehicle is. No one wants names and addresses of vehicle owners do they?. All we want is info that does not breach any privacy laws
i think you need to go to target or fair go they will sort it out and get it public so every body knows how much nzta are ripping us off
Once again yet another govt dept seeing how much money they can make from us!!! Enough is enough!! Day light robbery as usual.
This is a great web site & Im very disappointed to hear changes are proposed. Keep trying as we love your site just as it is now with all this information in 1 simple place.
@Anton…. Consider it done.
Absolutely ridiculous NZTA are a bunch of WANKERS. Along with the NZ Government. You cannot get the vehicle owners details or address from the free part of carjam. Get a life and do something good for New Zealanders.
just the other day we were looking at a 93 truck on trademe then looked up carjam only to find out the user road was only paid up till 93.000 while the truck had done 140.000 just think the headaches this would have caused us to sort out we use this site alot to check these things out before buying catches out tricksters trying to hide things a fantastic site
they should leave as is i have used carjam for a car check and found it to be a spammer that didn’t own the car!!
only did i find this out by getting information from carjam.
another government stuffup made by people that think they know better than anybody else under public interest, back to front if you ask me.
then you can opt out and have your information hidden??
good for criminals!!!
Please update your post with a link to the official announcement from NZTA so we can see EXACTLY what they are proposing.
Thanks,
Glen
great site for wofs millage etc what the hell owner info is not given so whats the harm?
Once again, the rotten government declares itself an enemy of the people. No problem to the crooked fatcat politicians, in their taxpayer provided chauffered limo’s, on full pay for life after just ten years of stuffing their faces at Bellamy’s. Rat pigs.
Time to get into the hot car business. Should be much easier now!
Obviously, the new law just makes vulnerable people more vulnerable. Rich people do not really care this small amount of money if they want to purchase vehicles. But poor people do! $30 can mean a lot for a family on benefit.
You pay a nominal fee to get an idea of the owners name, sex and suburb and if you have an uncommon name or you are well known it doesnt take an orangutang to get the adress, then you really dont feel too confident in bed at night or away on holiday especially if you have a phase 3 locked in the garage.
As for Anton, yes, but it takes another year before the name is removed from the phone book and then theres the electoral roll.
By all means, keep vehicle details BUT LOSE OWNER DETAILS.
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicle/registration-licensing/information-qa.html
Have a look at No. 15 in the list at the above webbsite. It is only the names of private owners that will be withheld. However, if Carjam (and the public) are to be charged for every bit of info from LTSA, then this is not unexpected under the Nats, but how much???? Are we fighting over $5.00 or $50.00??
The number of stolen cars, or cars with non matching numbers being sold is already bad enough, unfortunately there is no social concience in Government if there is a way of recovering costs from the end user.
I think that each WoF should include a full printout of the vehicle history, I’d be happy to pay an extra $5.00 per wof to have that data.
okay every body, hold your horses. have a read of this:
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicle/registration-licensing/information-qa.html
“15. What about technical and physical details of vehicles?
All details of a vehicle (make, model, colour, weight, engine capacity and fuel type, odometer reading, country of origin, whether imported used or new, vehicle inspection history, type of fuel, whether subject to a Warrant of Fitness or Certificate of Fitness, the number of owners, etc) will continue to be available.”
now i don’t know if it will be available for free as it currently is. however, it suggests it will be free.
Paul, it will be available but not for free.
Im about to shell out $470 for certifing my mods on my car. Where the hell does that money go ? this is just another money grab from this asshole government department.
Legal people who bother to cert their cars usually put high quality safe mods in and are not the problem on our roads, we are the poor sods who line the pockets of those pricks at the LTSA.
I was sad to hear about this. I personally base each car I buy on its carjam an vinz report an its AA test. Not only is this utterly disappointing but it also allows the dodgey people to get away with tampering odometers an fake plates ect. I don’t agree with this at all, and I think with all the hikes in gst,tax,food costs,registration fees an the lower wages an less jobs this is honestly pathetic and it can’t cost much $ per head of driving population to maintain this register.AND frankly even if it is costing “to much” we are paying for this with our rego fees as it is! So much crap going on in NZ atm and its making AUSTRALIA look really good about now..
Sam
I enjoy using car jam, lot of useful information, sad to see it go
Got me beat why they’d get rid of something like this. Surely it makes it easier than making a written Official Information or Privacy Act request?
As both of these acts have provision for members of the public to check information and ask for it to be corrected if in error, Carjam makes it easy to do this without having to employ another civil servant to process it.
Earlier this month I found out, through this site, that one of my vehicles was listed as having had its CoF run out 3 months ago,even though it had passed its inspection well before the due date. Anyone buying a report would have seen that and figured I had a dodgy sticker (not to mention what the Police might have thought if they’d seen it). Thanks to the free look up available I was able to find this information and get it corrected before it did too much harm.
How is this site less expensive for NZTA than having the same number of written requests delivered to them?
People need to read Dan’s comments from 8 July –
“Don’t jump the gun, read this:
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicle/registration-licensing/information-law-changes.html
The law change only affects the release of personal information, meaning name and address of owner, not all the car details.” Cheers Dan!
The law change is NOT (underline NOT!!!) removing the free info we have access to via the likes of CarJam; it offers vehicle owners an option to restrict public access to JUST (underline JUST) the names and addresses held on the Motor Vehicle Register. Currently, anyone paying the fee can get your name and address from your numberplate for whatever they want to do with it (ever wonder how mail spammers get their address lists???). Vehicle owners now have an option to opt out of the release of their name and address.
And, it’s not from 1 Jan 2011, but from 1 April 2011 that this new law will come into effect.
Scott, this is an entirely different matter. NZTA is closing free access from Jan 2011. NZTA has not published this on the site as it does not affect public directly. It only affects public through CarJam which they do not care about.
Just another example of REVENUE MAKING bullshit of New Zealand! The Government in particular. This decision will leave the consumer MORE VULNERABLE to rip-off sellers and exposed to more risks in purchasing a vehicle. NZTA can simply get %&$.
I can’t get to the link that was posted for the MTA site earlier where it shows each item that will now be charged for per query (http://www.mta.org.nz/n431,page=2071.html).
They’ve changed it so you need to log in to see the news article.
This is the closest thing posted there now:
http://www.mta.org.nz/n2099.html
but people who keep saying this is about privacy laws – this is definitely a seperate issue. one that i can’t say i’m worried about – if people want more privacy concerning their personal details that’s absolutely fair enough. these personal details include name/sex/address etc and are only available only in the full purchasable reports on ANY site as far as I know. i will in fact be making sure my own details are private when this option becomes possible.
HOWEVER, i remember viewing the MTA table outlining the changes to the costs – when the link still worked – and it is the free stuff such as:
when the WOF and rego are due
if the odometer jumps back
the VIN
if the vehicle’s been registered overseas in the past
if the vehicle has been re-registered/had multiple plates
plus more technical information those who deal with car servicing on here find useful.
THIS is what NZTA wants to charge for – actually information that is VERY reasonable for the public to expect to be available for free. it certainly helps people weed out dodgy or undesirable cars when they’re purchasing, and as many tradespeople have said, things which help them provide a more timely and accurate service to their customers.
This is a money grab by the NZTA (and our government) and is disgusting in my opinion. People just want a fair go in this country, and Carjam helps provide a fantastic free service to its users. Yes our country is having some money issues (as are many), but stop treating the public like cash cows!
Anton – it would help to have an official link or list of what EXACTLY the charges will be for to put the argument to rest that this issue you are looking for our support on is about the privacy changes. Plus we can see exactly what information we will be missing out on (for free) when this new law passes.
Cheers.
The charges will be 16c per query. We cannot sustain giving 16c/query away for free as we have 1.5 million of free ones a month which is $240,000. In order to cover 16c with online purchase we will have to charge at least a $1 which is pretty inconvenient. NZTA does not realise people are not going to do this. Crime will increase as a result, safety of vehicle transactions will drop. They will get less revenue from CarJam and our competitors and their story of “cost recovery” will come to them as a real cost. They are currently making over $200K+/months from the non-free data. Which is heaps to cover the operation. It does not have any logic. Yes, looks like MTA closed the article off. We have been emailed about the charges.
With the 16c charge per query it will cause fraud onto the car industry. buyers would be vulnerable to the threat of sellers and hence could cause problem.
Those greedy little bureaucrats just can’t help themselves. Who do those clowns think they are working for. I always had the impression they worked for the taxpayer. Once again, they use the people they are suppose to be representing as a source of revenue.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXhttp://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicle/registration-licensing/information-qa.html (Q&A on the law change)
They clearly state All details of a vehicle (make, model, colour, weight, engine capacity and fuel type, odometer reading, country of origin, whether imported used or new, vehicle inspection history, type of fuel, whether subject to a Warrant of Fitness or Certificate of Fitness, the number of owners, etc) will continue to be available.
They are only changing the law to prevent release of personal details.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
GOVERMENT IS DOING IT TO PROTECT CONSUMER’S PERSONAL INFO, SUCH AS NAME AND ADDRESSES.
IMAGING A STALKER SEEING A PRETTY LADY DRIVING A CAR, CAME TO CARJAM AND FIND OUT HER ADDRESS ETC.. STARTING TO STALK HER. I THINK IT’S UNREASONABLE TO PUBLISH DRIVER’S ADDRESSES ETC..
Ownership information is a separate issue and will come to effect on 1st of April 2011.
Vehicle details will continue to be available but not for free from Jan 2011.
The LTSA charge every motorist anually, I dont know of any business that charges its customers to find out about the state of there account, we all need to start ringing there 0800 numbers to to find out our account balances, the cost of staff to answer our calls would far outway any cost recovery they think they are due
Those who claim the imposition of charges for obtaining the information presently free on carjam is not the case and who refer you to the NZTA website have been conned. The NZTA website material is about effectively stopping the availability of names of owners and other information which has now to be paid for on carjam. It cunningly says nothing about the introduction of a cost to use the currently free information carjam provides and I have no doubt that nzta fully intends to stop the free information. Clever though, isn’t it – use the privacy provisions to restrict information which is currently charged for and then make good the downturn in income by charging for what is now free. Shame on NZTA and the government and all the self-serving little bureaucrats whose salaries are paid by us, the taxpayer and everlastingly ripped off motorist. Don’t let them get away with it.
I don’t like to think how much this will affect my work. I work for a small automotive repair shop and I am in and out of car jam all day. Such a great sight for the Automotive Industry. Please don’t let this happen.
I thought we as New Zealanders were meant to live in a democracy where our voice counts. It seems as every day passes we are being dictated to more and more what we can or cannot do, this is not right. Car Jam does not give away personal details so I fail to see how any one can justify outlawing free, HARMLESS information. Don’t let this happen!!