They check it before they message you.

Almost nothing in a car advert is unfalsifiable.

That sounds like a constraint. It is actually the seller's biggest advantage, and almost nobody uses it.

Think about what a buyer does with a shortlist of four Golfs. They put each registration into the MOT history service. Within a minute they know the recorded mileages at every test, whether the readings run in a straight line, what came up as an advisory last year, and whether anything failed. They have not spoken to you and they have already formed a view — and if your advert said "low mileage, long MOT, no advisories" and the record says otherwise, they have formed it about you rather than about the car.

The advert that survives that is the one that got there first. Advisories volunteered cost nothing and read as somebody with nothing to hide. Advisories omitted are the thing that gets found. The same logic runs through the whole document: a keeper count that matches the V5C, a service history described by stamp count rather than by adjective, a condition paragraph that names the kerbed alloy before the buyer sees it in photo four.

Which is why this job removes claims rather than adding them. Everything a buyer can act on — mileage, service history, MOT status, keeper count, write-off category, outstanding finance — is something it will not write unless you supplied it, and each one comes back naming the document that would let you say it properly. It will not assert a car is clear of finance or has never been written off, and it will not imply the opposite either. It has run no check. It has read an advert.

A real advert, before and after.

From the Auto Trader rubric behind the job.

The last two lines are doing more work than every adjective that was removed. "Bring an independent inspection" and "payment at a bank" are what a cautious buyer is looking for and are almost never offered, because sellers assume the buyer wants enthusiasm. The buyer wants reassurance that this will not be a wasted Saturday.

"Cash on collection only, no timewasters" went for the same reason. It reads as a seller braced for a fight, and a car sale where the money moves in a bank branch is safer for you as well.

One fork decides half the report.

Are you selling privately, or in the course of a business? The obligations are not the same, and the difference is larger than anything else in the advert — "sold as seen" does nothing for a trader, and a private seller does not owe what a trader owes on quality and fitness for purpose.

Plenty of adverts are genuinely ambiguous about it: someone selling their fourth car this year, or a sole trader using a personal account. Where the advert does not settle it, the report asks rather than assuming. It will not add warranty, finance or part-exchange wording on a guess, and it will not label you a private seller either.

What happens.

• Paste the advert. Headline, description, and the spec, mileage, MOT and history lines exactly as you have written them. Do not tidy it first — the phrases you would tidy are the ones worth looking at.
• £7, one payment. Seven thousand points, a ceiling of 3,500 on this job, and only what the report costs is spent. Three revisions come with it, and you will want them: the first pass hands you a list of things to go and read off the V5C and the service book.
• Back comes a scored report. The score is capped hard by any unsupported claim. Then the claims ranked by how much trouble each could cause, a rewritten advert with a real condition paragraph, the photo set to shoot, and the documents to find.

A generation that fails spends nothing.

Honest fit.