Consumer Protection Lawyers

Law Office of Arthur L. Weiss, P.C.

Turning back the odometer?  Seems like such a 1970's thing to do.  Go under the dashboard with a screwdriver and twiddle a few rotary dials to chop a thousand miles off your 63 Chevy.  Actually, today odometer fraud is big business.  Devices to turn back digital odometers can be had for a few hundred dollars on the internet.  Some recent estimates from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration claim that almost four percent of all vehicles will have their odometers rolled back within the first eleven years.  The report is available on the NHTSA website and is titled The Incidence Rate of Odometer Fraud (2002) by Christina Morgan.

 

Odometer fraud consists of manually or electronically modifying the odometer in a vehicle to reflect that the mileage is lower than it should be.  There is a powerful economic incentive for owners, especially fleet owners to perform this simple task.  “Spinning” 50,000 miles out of a leased vehicle could raise its retail value anywhere between $3,000 to $10,000 depending on the type of car.  If you are the fleet manager for 1000 cars, the incentive to make an average five thousand bucks more per car by tweaking the odometer is tempting.  The greatest targets for odometer rollback, according to the study, is a late model vehicle with high mileage, i.e. a leased vehicle. 

 

Can’t online sellers of used car data identify a rollback?  Probably not.  The twenty dollars you spend for a Carfax or other historical report will not expose the sophisticated, mass quantity rollbacks engaged in by larger entities.  Will it catch the backyard spinner trying to pass off a few cars with lower mileage, perhaps, but that is not even guaranteed.  Leasing companies with thousands of vehicles obtain the vehicle with fairly low mileage, usually below one hundred miles. The lessee (the guy leasing the car) will usually drive the tires off the thing and accumulate twenty five to thirty thousand miles a year driving from sales call to sales call.  After 3 years a car that should have 40,000 has 90,000 miles.  What is that car worth on the retail lot - not much.  However, a car with 40,000 miles will fetch a handsome price.  So the leasing company rolls back the odometer to 40,000 and transfers the car to a retail dealership for sale.  The dealer will claim no first hand knowledge that the odometer has been modified and will sell it at the 40,000 mile price.  Does that mean he PAID the 40,000 price to the fleet company?  Not on your life. 

 

How to get around this?  The most obvious answer is to buy a new car.  Unfortunately this would not have worked in all cases.  A few years ago, one of the big three US automakers, the one now owned by a German prestige car maker, got caught selling executive vehicles as new.  It turns out the odometer cable was disconnected while the executives tooled around in the vehicles.  After ten thousand miles or so the odometer cable was reconnected and the car sold as new.  They got caught and the stuff hit the fan. 

 

Second - try to get as much of the maintenance history of the vehicle as you can.  If you purchase a fleet vehicle check for any maintenance records in the car or on the door panel. There may be indications of mileage when the oil was changed or when some other maintenance action took place. 

 

Titles and other government required paperwork is always susceptible to doctoring and fraud. The condition of the car, on the other hand, tells the story.  Believe the wear and tear on the brake pedal before you trust their mileage disclosures.  For extensive information on what to look for when assessing a used car you can visit www.samarins.com/check/simplecheck.html - this provides an excellent overview of how to inspect each automotive system.

 

Congress and the states have passed numerous laws to protect the consumer from odometer fraud.  As I have steadfastly maintained - consumer protection laws are marginally helpful and will probably not shield you from odometer fraud.  Your best protection is your own keen eye, preparation and a little research/reading.  Be skeptical, be wary, if something seems wrong or out of place - demand an answer. If the answer sounds like doubletalk then walk or drive away.

Phone: 520.319.9057

Fax: 520.319.9058

E-mail: weiss60@msn.com

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odometer fraud