How this little device can ruin your day and cause you a lot of pain down the road

One of the ugliest customer interactions I have had in my career involved this little device, a mileage blocker. Now when I hear about or see these, I think of Mr. T’s famous line from Rocky when he’s asked about his prediction for the fight, “Pain.” About 10 years ago, a lease customer had installed one of these on his high-end luxury vehicle so he could drive it as much as he wanted before turning it in at lease end without penalty. Like often happens in mileage discrepancy cases, the issue was not apparent right away to either the auction, dealer, or our field rep. The vehicle sold and then was sold by the purchasing dealer to a retail consumer. After the consumer had it for a few weeks, they took it to a dealer for some warranty work and the previous install of this device was discovered. Of course, that led to a costly unwinding of all the deals involved and a fight with a consumer who denied doing it.

What is surprising to me is some recent statistics on mileage roll backs. It is estimated that about 3.5% of vehicles 11 years old and newer have fewer miles on the odometer than the vehicle actually has traveled. That is almost 2 million vehicles in the U.S and that number is up about 7% YOY. No real surprise, they are most common in high leasing areas like California & Florida. Pretty staggering stats. It doesn’t take much research to determine why that is, as a quick googling will present you with several options for obtaining these and how to install them, which differs by vehicle. They are not super expensive either.

Digital odometers were supposed to help clean up the issue of odometer rollbacks from back when people would regularly take their off-lease or used car to a shady shop in a run-down area of town to have the deed done. In reality, newer odometers have made committing this felony a bit tougher and made catching it a bit easier, but it hasn’t changed the fact that consumers will still turn to this type of thing.

Knowing what to look for can certainly help catch these situations before they escalate, but the ability to track down the internal car data to know differs widely from vehicle to vehicle and still often makes us dependent on later discoveries after a vehicle is sold. However, we have some good tools today in vehicle history reports that let us take a peek at the service history of some vehicles. Albeit, they are not always correct, but it is better than nothing & what we had 20 years ago. Weird patterns of mileage or service visits without mileage being reported can be signs to look at the more mechanical issues. I discovered a lot about this when running down information for the aforementioned case I handled.

As the saying goes, a person’s shoes can tell you a lot about them. Where they have been and maybe where they have not. Same goes for a vehicle’s tires. One of my favorite things to check. Looking at date codes on tires is a simple way of knowing if a low mile car is wearing new rubber or not and if the need for new tires lines up with its mileage. Of course, this is just one of many techniques, including looking for signs of tampering around the dash and cluster, unusual wear on mechanical items, & codes in the computer, to just name a few.

Nonetheless, I’d urge you to take a second look at vehicles & service histories the next time you are buying or selling cars. The initial clues will often start there, even if it doesn’t end in the same spot.

#odometerfraud #odometerdiscrepancies #remarketing #automotivefinance