ST. LOUIS – A warning tonight if you are in the market for a used car. New data from Carfax shows a 13 percent increase in the number of vehicles on the road with an odometer rollback.
A vehicle’s mileage is one of the key factors in its value. CarFax’s Emilie Voss is warning about odometer fraud. The company uses a vehicle’s VIN number to track mileage discrepancies. She says this odometer fraud is up 113-percent in St.Louis from 2019.
“When we look specifically at the St.Louis area, CarFax data shows 11,400 on the road in the area with a rolled back odometer.” Added Voss.
Josh Ingle owns Atlanta Speedometer. He demonstrated how quickly that technology can shave miles off a vehicle’s odometer.
“This particular truck is an ’07 model. We’ve got 265-hundred miles showing on the odometer. After I enter in and choose year, make and model on the device, all we do is set it and you’ll see the odometer change to 85,000. It’s that simple. It’s going to hold that mileage until we decide to go change it or drive it.” Said Ingle.
Ingle says the lower mileage would add 85-hundred dollars in value to that truck.
“If the instrument cluster was disassembled and somebody removed a part off the board, we’d be able to tell that, but if somebody is simply plugging this into the odb2 port like on this vehicle, and altered it in this manner, there’s no real way that you can do it, other than having it inspected by a mechanic or doing your due diligence to see if the vehicle wear matches what the odometer shows.” Added Ingle.
CarFax offers this advice to used-car buyers.
“In addition to getting a CarFax report, we recommend everyone take a vehicle for an independent inspection. That trained mechanic is going to see things maybe you or I aren’t going to see.” Said Voss.
