Why the RDW will not act without these nine digits
List everything a Dutch registration can be made to do. Sold on, traded in, suspended for a year, exported, scrapped. Not one of them happens without the code. The RDW, the Dutch vehicle authority, reads the card as proof of which car you mean and the code as proof that you are entitled to do something about it. A card on its own is a description. The code is the authority.
In a sale that lands in one place. Your buyer cannot be entered as the new keeper until both the card and all nine digits have passed from you to them, and the whole handover turns on that moment. How the RDW transfer runs shows where it falls in the day. Reissuing a code changes nothing about the registration number itself.
Four digits from one envelope, five from another
Nobody ever receives the code in one piece. Part 1 is four digits, printed on the registration report (tenaamstellingsverslagThe slip produced the moment a car is registered to someone. Part 1 of their code is on it, so it is worth filing away for years.) you walked away with on the day the car became yours. Part 2 is five digits and came separately, in the letter that carried the registration card. The two were never joined up for you, which is why so many sellers think they have lost a code when they are holding half of it.
Cars bought new skip that split. Their complete code is posted in an envelope of its own, following the card by a day. A leased or financed car is a different matter again, because the code was never issued in the driver's name at all. It sits with the lease or finance company, and only they can request another.
Anything still on the paper registration that the card replaced in 2014 has no code and never had one. Those transfers run on the paper documents, which which papers a buyer needs lists in full.
Two lookups on the RDW site, done before you advertise
The RDW runs a free lookup at documentnummercontroleren.rdw.nl, and it answers two separate questions. Feed it the plate and the document number (documentnummerThe number in the bottom right corner of the front of the card. Together with the plate, it is what the RDW lookup wants in order to tell you whether a card is live.) from the bottom right of the card, and it tells you whether that card is the live one. Feed it the document number together with the code, and it tells you whether those two were issued as a pair.
Cards go quietly out of date. Order a duplicate years ago, come across the original later, and you can be holding the wrong one with nothing on its face to say so. A paper registration carries no such number, so this lookup is closed to it. Either question can come back badly, and each has its own fix.
- The card is not the live one. Nothing can be transferred or suspended on it, so a replacement registration card has to come first.
- The card is live, but the digits do not belong to it. The card stays as it is and you order a code by one of the routes below.
Ordering a new code, and what that costs you
Before paying for anything, go through two places: the letter the card came in, and the registration report you were handed when the car became yours. Plenty of people turn up one half and give up there. If both are genuinely gone, the RDW will issue a new code, on condition that you hold the registration card and the car stands in your name or your company's.
Three things about ordering are worth knowing in advance. There is a fee and it is not refunded. The request cannot be withdrawn once it is in. And the old nine digits stop working immediately, so unearthing the original letter the following morning does you no good at all.
- Online with DigiD, or eHerkenning for a company. Payment runs through iDEAL or Wero, two emails come back, and the code hangs off a link in the second. Download it at once: that link has a 40 day life.
- At a counter, meaning the RDW in Veendam or Zoetermeer, or any RDW inspection station. Bring the card and valid ID and you will not leave empty handed.
- On paper, if DigiD is not an option. The code travels to the address your gemeente, your municipality, holds for you, so count on a few working days and promise a buyer nothing before it lands.
Somebody ordering on your behalf, or ordering without DigiD, is asked for the reporting code (meldcodeFour characters lifted from the end of the vehicle identification number and printed on the card. It stands in for DigiD when a code is ordered on paper or for somebody else.). The card carries it, and so does the registration report.
The tijdelijk documentnummer is not a private shortcut
Searching in Dutch throws up the temporary document number (tijdelijk documentnummer), and it reads like a way around a missing code. It is nothing of the kind. The RDW hands it to recognised businesses, importers and lease companies in particular, for vehicles sitting in their own stock. It costs them nothing, and it exists so that they can trade between themselves and export cars for which no valid card is available.
None of that reaches a private owner. If you are one, the RDW points you back at the ordinary replacement route above.
Who gets to see the code, and when
The code behaves like a key, so the timing of handing it over matters more than where you keep it. It goes to the buyer at the same moment as the card, face to face, or to whoever is on the desk at a recognised business if that is the buyer. Anybody who asks for the nine digits before committing to the car has no business holding them, and a photograph of them in a chat thread amounts to handing them over. The RDW also warns about text messages that impersonate it. No link in one of those is safe to follow, and no detail in one is safe to give.