How to check if a car is genuine mileage
Avoiding odometer fraud
Car clocking is dangerous.
A criminal attempt at increasing the value of cars through mileage reduction creates a raft of safety issues and significantly impacts value.
Buy a car with fraud mileage, and you have no idea how worn out most of the car parts are and what is likely to fail next.
You can visually inspect tyres and brakes, but cam belts, driveshafts, master cylinders and other working parts are more challenging to assess for wear and tear.
It’s a lot of risk.
Attn existing customers:
My CarVeto report highlights a mileage alert (rollback)
Check car mileage is genuine
Enter a registration plate number
(Such as RJ65AXF)
Modern car design makes car mileage fraud easier
More than 2 million cars (over 6% of all vehicles) on the road today are clocked.
You have a 6% chance of buying an illegitimate car.
Digital odometers were thought of as a more reliable and robust design in preventing car clockings.
However, it made life easier for criminals, who can manipulate car mileages with plugin software.
Genuine mileage isn’t genuine, after all.
Most of us expect modern technology to be a safer and more intelligent solution to correctly measuring the distance between two points.
But as the Society of Automotive Engineers stipulates, guidelines allow for a margin of error in mileage accuracy of up to 4% (see this citation for more detail on the lack of regulation).
4% is hefty when you consider average annual mileage. Over a ten-year driving stretch, alleged legitimate mileage may be off by up to 10,000 miles!
How modern mileage tampering works
Modern vehicles are managed through a central modular design.
Simply put, the car system elements work independently and in tandem with the central car unit.
Let’s say you have your car serviced. Any parts replaced are recorded (backed up) in the central unit of your car with a date and mileage stamp.
It creates a timeline of all the changes within each module unit in the vehicle.
Along comes a buddying car clocker who reduces the mileage.
The central unit of the car now has a history of replacing car parts that point to mileages in the future. This conflict naturally creates an error in the system, leading to a warning message illuminated somewhere on the dashboard display.
Mileage error messages differ from one make of car to another
Many car manufacturers use an asterisk symbol to alert an inconsistency in the system.
Others use an exclamation mark within the odometer reading.
Experienced criminals can overcome these error message displays, but it’s tricky to achieve. Most times, the car clocker will hope that their car buyer doesn’t notice the alert.
If you spot such an alert, be cautious. Such an alert does not automatically lead to a mileage rollback, but it does indicate some error in the control unit that needs investigating.
Online car mileage history check
Mileage discrepancy – how to tell if a car has been clocked.
If you want to see a drastic reduction in car value after a mileage alteration, see this car mileage check guide.
Mileage records are kept in a vehicle’s central processor, but you can also use the CarVeto database.
Partnership with DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency) allows us to trace mileage history recorded from past and present MOT checks.
Checking for mileage fraud
CarVeto serves an inconsistency alert by comparing past and present MOT mileages. Our system investigates full history to ensure mileage has not been reduced when compared to previous MOT tests.
Reports include a look at previous repairs and advisory notes.
Advisories need to be checked in the last two MOT tests. Unfortunately, most advisories will fail in the upcoming test, costing money to repair or replace.
Should I buy a car if the mileage isn’t genuine?
If you think a car has suffered from tampering and has a mileage discrepancy, we strongly recommend rejecting it.
Legal odometer replacements
Generally speaking, we do reject any vehicle with mileage issues, even when the odometer was genuinely replaced because it was faulty.
Mileage issues do not automatically mean the car was illegally tampered with. Any car part can break and need replacing.
There are thousands of vehicles on the road with legal, replacement odometers.
If a vehicle has a genuine odometer replacement, we expect to see full documentation, and so should you, including:
- All parts replaced
- Actual mileage at the time work was carried out (mileage readings)
- Date of odometer change
But, we still tend to reject vehicles even when the current odometer replacement is genuine.
Mileage inconsistency makes for a complex sale.
Most times, buying a car with odometer mileage discrepancies is more hassle than it’s worth.
Documentation vehicle checks
All modern online vehicle check service history should be stored on the supplying dealer’s database, unless maintenance was carried out with a local garage.
It is good practice to ask for all paper invoices and receipts.
Look for the dates and mileages of maintenance work.
Get valuable insights into how well the car has been maintained and for mileage anomalies.
Telephone the supplying dealers and get details on all services and maintenance work carried out on the vehicle.
Buying a strangely low mileage vehicle
Genuine, low mileage cars exist.
It’s great to find an older car with exceptionally low miles.
We once bought a twelve-year-old Ford Focus with an exact mileage of 13,000 miles on the clock.
The car was in mint condition. It had a range of services every 12-months regardless of mileage.
Everything about the car rang of quality and genuineness. It was apparent this vehicle had been well looked after and was underused.
We used our instincts, examined previous owner checks (log book) and a service book audit.
There were no signs of clocking, and our car history check confirmed this vehicle to display original mileage.