Unfortunately I had to sell my car last year to move up a size (for family reasons). Unfortunately as the diesel had only got about 78k under its belt and was going brilliantly.
Anyway, I recently got a letter/questionaire from a company called Vehicle Mileage Check Ltd asking me to fill in details of when I had sold it and how many miles it had done.
Got a letter yesterday saying "Please confirm or amend your sale mileage as the speedometer reading is currently showing only 44076 miles and there has been another keeper since you!"
I feel a little sorry for the new owner as over 30K miles + a years worth of driving have been taken off the clock. But more I feel a little angry that someone has tampered with my beloved ex!
Who are VMC Ltd? I suppose that they are an industry based company. I have never come across these guys before so am thinking that they should become much more high profile in order to stamp out the clockers.
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What we need is the law to take clocking seriously. Clocking and selling a car is no different from mugging someone, in both cases you are thieving their money.
Someone sold me a clocked car once. I managed to resolve the situation to my satisfctaion as I have 22 cousins (Catholic family) who are well known in my home town.
However the clocker subsequently was prosecuted by Trading Standards, he pleaded guilty to 64 examples (so how many did he do and not get caught) and received 100 hours community service and a £2,000 fine.
Lets say he only clocked the ones he was prosecuted for, lets say £1,000 profit from clocking per car, thats £62,000 clear profit. Who says crime does not pay.
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Thommo,
Let's not stop there. Clocking is mugging as you say.
But let's add insurance applications naming a parent as the main driver when Horace Sprogg is the real driver - and usually in a different area.
Then there is the obigatory leather coat/set of golf clubs that is in the boot of every car that gets pinched.
Add to this the repair that suddenly inflates the minute "insurance job" is mentioned.
The list goes on.......
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Steve,
I do not disagree it is all theft and we do not take it seriously and we all we end up paying for it indirectly both through higher costs and a breakdown in the fabric of our society. What we have lost is shame, those who do not clock cars for example even on the sale of their own vehicles are 'suckers' for not exploiting the system.
As I wander around Britain these days I do get a real Rome at the end of empire feel and virtually everyone I know is moving to Spain, but thats another story...
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I suspect that you are right when you say that those of us who do not clock the car are suckers. But the peace of mind that I get from being honest is better than making a few dishonest pounds. I got taught a lesson at a relatively early age in life.
Surely the industry can design a computer that can leave tell tale marks if it has been clocked. This guy took off say 35k miles plus say another 5k odd before selling on. What is 40k worth on a BMW 325tds - £2-3000?
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I sold my father-in-law's car last week for 650 quid with 176K miles on the clock, even though the clock showed 76K. Foolish or honest?
Clockers are thieves and should be treated as such. (which probably means a slap on the wrist and a five pound fine.) String 'em up, I say.
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I suspect that it could be easily done but the car manufacturers will not spend money on it unless there is a return for them. Example, security, you could open most cars with a spam key until buyers stopped buying cars with poor security.
I suspect the manufacturers current attitude is that they only care who they sell the car to and with a new car clocking is not an issue.
I can't help thinking that a manufacturer such as Rover is missing a trick here. For very little money they could make unclockable Rovers and second hand values should rise, making the new car a more economic prospect for the buyer. Differentiation without big bucks spent.
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It's certainly true that cars are only built for the first owner, but publicity over the years has brought about an awareness by the public of corrosion, and we now see long term warranties given. I don't think the average punter considering a new car thinks of anti-clocking as a priority - perhaps if he does look forward to the day of parting, he might even consider it a minus!
It would need a bit of a press campaign to stir up positive awareness.
Or somebody could write to their MP? He might get a medal for thinking of yet another rule - even if useful for once.
Tomo
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those who do not clock cars ... are 'suckers' for not exploiting the system.
80 per cent of cars are clocked. [1] 80 per cent go through auctions.
I think we can deduce from this that every car on a small dealers forecourt has had it's clock wound back, presumably by that dealer.
A good trick is to hide a buisiness card with the mileage in a vehicle when you sell it or it's returned to the lease company.
The new owner will find it hopefully the dealer wil not.
[1] I can't find a source for this figure [2] but I saw it on TV so it must be accurate.
[2] Quite a hard figure to collect, what do you do send a questionaire saying 'do you clock cars'?
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These are my own opinions, and not necessarily those of all Toads.
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These people want the information that you have and (probably) want to sell it on, for a fee. Offer to fill in the form, also for a fee and see what they think.
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Why bother doing that?
The company exists so that buyers can pay a fee to have peace of mind about their purchase by making sure it's not clocked/stolen/written off. I think that's a good thing and if I got a similar form about my old car saying it's reading a lower mileage, I would definately grass up whoever did it. :)
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Why bother doing that? The company exists so that buyers can pay a fee to have peace of mind about their purchase by making sure it's not clocked/stolen/written off. I think that's a good thing and if I got a similar form about my old car saying it's reading a lower mileage, I would definately grass up whoever did it. :)
I agree with your feelings and am fully intending to help the company catch these people. Overall I am annoyed that someone else has profited dishonestly from a car that I had to let go (a) too cheaply and (b) too early in its life.
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Agreed.
Unfortunately the average punter is easily taken in.
As another example, with modern design and printing technology, designing a full service history (ie a convincing amount of invoices from a local service station) should be well within the average scrote's ability.
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done a little research and in fact I sold the car with 88k on the clock. so with a potential years extra use (say 12k) 100k car has now become a 44k car.
GRRRRRRRR.
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I dont understand why the DVLC have not made the mileage reading a compulsory part of selling a car. The V5 has the mileage section there but its not a legal requirement to fill it in.
The most common time for a car to be clocked is probably when its finished its 3 year lease and has 70-90K on the clock.If the auction/lease company made the effort to record this mileage it would appear with NMR (national mileage register ,part of HPI check).
Assuming a trader/dealer buys this 3 year old lease car from auction he will eventually sell it on to a private individual who should recieve a new V5 with the Mileage PRINTED on the new V5.This should continue every time the car is sold.
This could also be tied in with MOT tests. Each time the car is MOT'd its mileage should be sent to DVLA then onto NMR.
I personally think cars which have sustained serious damage should have there V5's endorsed by the insurance which pays out for the damage.
This would turn the existing V5 into (what many still call) a logbook.
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Surely the answer to this is to cure the ignorant belief that low mileage is good. When the clockers are adding miles to the one lady owner 6k miles a year car we will know we have succeded.
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Surely the answer to this is to cure the ignorant belief that low mileage is good. When the clockers are adding miles to the one lady owner 6k miles a year car we will know we have succeded.
Yes, very true. Can someone explain precisely what the offence of 'clocking' actually is?
Is it winding the clock back, or would forward be clocking too?
Is it an offence to replace a failed speedometer with one from a dismantlers, which will obviously show another reading?
Would it be an offence to leave the wrong mileage if it were lower? Or wrong to adjust it to show that it reads the same mileage as the old unit?
Some years ago I replaced the faulty speedo on my Saab 96. I wound the replacement speedo to show the correct mileage, for the sake of continuity of service records apart from truthfulness.
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I beleive the offence is basically fraud - passing off a car as something that it isn't. It's not illegal to fit a new speedo as long as you don't tell the buyer when you come to sell it that the 15,000 miles it shows on a 150,000 mile car is genuine. IIRC it's not the actual adjustment that's illegal, it's the passing it off as something that it isn't.
Richard
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A programme on TV a while ago in which they set up their own garage and then simply rang the guys from yellow pages to come and clock the cars they had on the forecourt.
Along comes chummy with some laptop gizmo and asks how much do you want off the speedo and does it within a few minutes and then moves on to the next car.
I know it would be classed as entrapment but why on earth can't the authorities carry out the same ploys as the TV company to catch these people.
The same with false passports, bogus asylum seekers, drug dealers and so on. The TV fella's seem to be able to expose and even film criminals with ease.
Maybe the Police would benefit from having their own detectives trained by the media.
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If I found that a car I had sold had been 'clocked' I'd tell Trading Standards. If somebody (a commercial organisation) wants info I've got about a car I used to own they can pay for it, if they want it that badly. If the new owner or potential buyer wants info from me thay can have it and welcome. If some trickery is unearthed then it is joint action with Trading Standards or the police IMHO!
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It's not only the "Arfurs" who are into clocking.
Many years ago my boss chopped in his car to a Ford dealer.
A couple of weeks later I was with him when he saw it on the forecourt, so out of interest we had a look at how they had tarted it up for sale and found that it had lost 30 or 40 thousand miles.
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>>>It's not only the "Arfurs" who are into clocking.
Oi. None of that!
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That reminds me of a friend's dad many years ago. He wanted to get rid of his company car on the mileage limit so decided to clock it forwards. He disconnected the speedo cable, clamped the end in the chuck of the electric drill and left it running.
When he came back later he found that the drill had fallen off. Now he had
1. a broken speedo cable, which he had to replace at his expense
2. a burned out drill
3. the drill went the wrong way, he had taken a thousand miles off instead.
Not a good day.
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I would pass the info to the police telling them the request with the current stated mileage and the mileage when you sold it.
The offence generally associated with clocking is selling a vehicle with a misdescription in order to gain. Nowadays most dealers will try and get round this by putting disclaimers on that the mileage is not believed to be correct or warrantied to be correct, but this will not get them out of it if they have clocked it.
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Its to easy now to clock cars with electronic dashes all you need is a laptop.Firms even advertise .I always find the age of the tires one good method of checking.My old camaro is for sale at he main agents where I bought it and resold it ,two years later it ahs the same kilometer stand 32000km and worn out tyres.
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I keep all my MOT certificates. They have mileage recorded there. No good for under 3 year old cars of course.
As for the law catching these people? Well I believe in punishment fitting the crime.
£1 per 100 miles should be the fine for first offence..
£1 per 10 miles the second.
Would there be a a third at £1 per mile?
And each car counts as an offence?
Only trouble is the police and Crown Persecution Service would have to persecute and act.. Based on some stories that is rather difficult. (what are they paid for I hear you ask?)
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Isn't this caused by the buyer's inability to accept that vehicles are capable of high mileages these days? If a car looks as though it's done 60K, sounds like it, and drives like it, what does it matter? I bought my Xantia with 93,000 on the clock and it's not let me down in three and a half years, and thats a Citroen, which many shun at that mileage. My BX had 127,000 when I bought it, and I ran it to 150,000 before I sold it for the Xantia. There's a taxi driver in Blackpool, I read, that has 500,000 on his Mondeo. I bought a ten year old motorbike and I've done 17,000 miles in 15 months. Mileage really doesn't matter that much, condition is much better way of putting a value on a car/bike.
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Isn't this caused by the buyer's inability to accept that vehicles are capable of high mileages these days? If a car looks as though it's done 60K, sounds like it, and drives like it, what does it matter?
Probably because (s)he has paid £2-3k more than it "should" be.
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