Motorcheck.ie Highlights Car Clocking on RTE News
Posted by Shane Teskey on 7 October 2011 in Car Clocking, Featured, How we've helped, Used Car Buying Tips
Most of our readers already know that Motorcheck takes the issue of car clocking very seriously. We’ve highlighted the problem on this blog many times and continue to help customers avoid buying a dodgy car on a daily basis.
In an effort to see if the problem was still as bad as ever we conducted a study of 6,000 Motorcheck reports that were produced this year for Irish consumers thinking of buying a car. The results were staggering - 1 in 5 of the vehicles we reported on were returned with an odometer discrepancy and potentially clocked.
One of the reasons people get conned by car clockers is that there simply isn’t enough awareness amongst the general public about the extent of this problem. We’re now a nation of bargain hunters and when we think we’ve found the deal of the century we’re inclined to act without thinking and hand over the cash.
The amount of people who contact us for advice after handing over cash in a supermarket car park to a stranger for a car that later turns out to be clocked (or worse) never ceases to surprise me.
In the News
RTE’s Nine O’Clock News featured the results of our study on tonight’s bulletin and I’m positive that this will help. At least for the moment….but more needs to be done. Our detection rate is increasing but it’s intrinsically linked to the quantity and quality of data our researchers can gather.
More Mileage Readings Required
Since 2007 the NCT programme has tested over 4 million cars (not including re-tests) and recorded an odometer reading at each test. Our own National Mileage Register has just under 4 million readings currently available to Motorcheck customers. If we combined the two we would have a greatly enhanced and effective weapon against car clocking.
For vehicles in the UK or previously imported to Ireland our UK partners provide our customers with access to over 50 Million odometer readings and our detection rate on clocked imports is benefiting greatly as a result.
RTE’s Will Goodbody reports in the piece above that Government officials are looking into the possibility of sharing the NCT data. SIMI’s Alan Nolan supports the proposal and Motorcheck is more than willing to do the heavy lifting (technically speaking). Here’s hoping it comes sooner than later.
In the interim, while it continues to be easy for a car clocker to modify the odometer reading on a car, it’s not so easy to explain the discrepancy when it shows up on a Motorcheck.ie report. Thankfully our detection rate is growing and we’re seeing more and more of these rogue sellers being caught out by our valued customers.
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