The local auto dealers are minting money by tampering with the odometers of imported used cars to lesser kilometers or miles making the customers believe that the vehicles are of low mileage.
Sources told Daily Times that local dealers are involved in a big gimmick of reversing readings of odometers of imported used cars through software to earn huge profits as customers prefer less run used cars.
The dealers have been involved in this unethical practice for the last eight years. It first started in a main market of the city and now it is available at almost all auto markets of the metropolis.
In this regard, one man is very famous for his expertise in the main market of the city. His way of tampering odometers is simple as he first detaches it from the vehicle then connects it with the computer, and then after scanning the meter he with the help of software reverses the readings of the meter as per demand of the dealer in just 15 minutes.
Generally reading is being reversed in thousands of kilometers, for instance if one car has traveled 70,000 miles at the time of reaching Pakistani port the dealer converts this reading into 20,000 kilometres (kms).
The charges of meter reversing are Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 for below 1500cc vehicles and Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 for above 1500cc vehicles. Sources added that actual beneficiaries of this malpractice are showroom owners who increase the prices of the cars after reversing the meters by 20,000 kms to 25,000 kms.
Though the customer can know about the actual kms the car (he is buying) travelled in the auction letter or auction sheet given by Japanese authorities to the dealers or importers, it is sad that at the time of selling the car dealers hide the auction letter from the book or documents of the cars.
Why the customer doesn?t get to know about this cheating of the dealers is that he doesn?t demand the auction letter from the dealer he is buying vehicles from. And even if the customer gets the letter he is unable to read it because it is in Japanese language.
The source added that customers from Punjab and interior Sindh are major affectees of this illegal practice of the dealers as they are totally unaware of the technicalities of the field and gimmicking of the sellers.
One thing by which the customer can trace this tampering with the meter is that if he finds odo reading with a leading zero at extreme left (like 050000) it shows that the vehicle had gone past six digits mileage because one can change 150,000 into 050000, but that ?initial zero? will not go away. A local auto dealer, said importers should import four-grade cars and should provide auction sheets to the customers. But, he adds, unfortunately people don?t want good grade cars; they just need navigation or alloy wheels. While sharing his experience, he said importing four-grade car means very low profit margin or sometimes loss but it will involve no tampering.
He said the government should pay attention to this gimmickry of the dealers to fool people through tampering odometers or making fake auction sheets and must direct the concerned authorities to halt this illegal and unethical practice.
According to a careful estimate, approximately 50 percent of auto dealers in the city are involved in this unprofessional practice just to add hefty sums to their already huge profits on imported used cars. The dealers take Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 commission on the sale of a used Japanese car and after reversing the odometer they double their profit (by adding more Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000).
It is pertinent to mention that small segment cars (below 1000cc) commonly have their meter reversed in the market and even the dealer cannot identify that without reading the auction sheet for actual kms travelled.
The sad thing is that there are many advertisements on the Internet of such software meant to reverse meters and they are easily available in Pakistan. More surprising thing is that an institute in Faisalabad namely Pak Launch Technologies is offering digital car meter reverse training.
