Be careful to check your mileage when you get your car serviced!

[thewayne]

I read this a week ago or so. Scott Adams took his BMW in for repairs to the dealer. Dealer says there's a high demand for his car, and he can make a great offer. Adams gives him permission to look over the car and make an offer. Dealer calls back: car is worth salvage value.

He had previously taken it in to a tire shop, and they'd recorded the mileage as 30,000. Then later as 80,000. Actual miles: 50,000. The information was uploaded to CarFax and their system said the odometer had been tampered with, therefore the car was worth nothing.

Yesterday I got the oil in Russet's car changed. Today I went to log it in my spreadsheet, and I noticed something weird. All of a sudden my spreadsheet said that it had been 15,000 miles since the last oil change, which was blatantly wrong. Then I looked more closely at the invoice: they recorded the mileage as 124,000. Actual miles on the car: 141,000.

I called them up to get this corrected before it could spread and ruin the trade-in value of the car, turns out that the incoming mileage was recorded wrong, either written down wrong by the tech or fat-fingered when entered in to the computer. The mileage was correctly recorded when the service was completed, so we're probably good.

So keep an eye on those service invoices when your car is worked on! Apparently it can be fixed, but Adams doesn't have the paperwork to prove the tire company was wrong.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/157447106751/the-paperwork-mistake-that-made-my-luxury-car

Comments

[moonhare]

Never thought of this! Thanks :o)

[thewayne]

I hadn't considered it either, but seeing how CarFax can report on a car, they must have lots of people sending them info.

After my credit report for car insurance got screwed up by my dad's accidents getting put on my history, I've become a little more conscious of the ways that data is aggregated.

[silveradept]

I don't have to worry as much about that, maybe, since mine has already had a salvage title applied to it, and that's already tanked the value?

[thewayne]

You could say that it's an advantage without it being an advantage. As long as it's safe to drive, then I guess you're good.

A guy I know got a screaming deal on a Mercedes convertible, sweet little car. But it had this red light that wouldn't go out. He finally took it to the dealer and found out that the light meant that it had been in a serious accident. There was a reason it was a great deal. :-)

[murakozi]

Dang. I usually check the odometer just to make sure someone didn't do a Ferris Beuller joy ride while the car's been in for service (not that that's likely to happen with my boring little Hyundai), but never thought to check the mileage on the paperwork itself.

[thewayne]

I'm a bit of an OCD database guy and I've maintained a spreadsheet of every tank of gas that's gone in to my cars, plus all the maintenance, since before 1990, so I've unconsciously watched for this. I just didn't know how important it was, and then a week or so after I read about what happened to Scott Adams' BMW I found it on my papers! When I get my computer area put back together, I'm going to scan this invoice and a few subsequent to show an audit of what happened, just in case....