Mileage blocker

Marshall86

I recently bought a BMW from Motorpoint (about 3/4 months ago). However, last Monday, I couldn't drive my car as the gear stick wouldn't shift out of 'park'. Sytner had to arrange for it to be towed to them (under warranty).

A week later, they inform me that they have finally managed to get a technician to have a look at the car and have discovered that a mileage blocker was installed. They informed me that it is illegal and they couldn't fix it under the warranty. Furthermore, they would no longer pay for the courtesy car that I had been given.

Motorpoint have agreed to have the car towed back to them and have also agreed to pay me back for the cost of the hire car. However, I am still quite annoyed that I was sold a car with this device installed. I am now without a car and Motorpoint have asked me to look for a different car. Currently there's no car that matches mine, so I will have to have a lesser car for around the same amount of monthly repayments. I will also have to wait for a car to be delivered to my nearest Motorpoint and I am paying a monthly repayment for a car that I do not have..

Can anyone advise me on what I should do? Do I just accept that I need to pick a new car and that's that? Or do I have grounds to take this further (as I understand, it is illegal to sell a car with a mileage blocker, although they will of course deny knowing about it)

Any help is greatly appreciated

angrycrow

Reject the car immediately and unwind the finance.

Sounds like a device fitted by a sub prime lender to secure the car if the customer fails to make their monthly finance payments. Should have been removed when the previous keeper sold it. To be fair to them the current dealer probably had no idea it was fitted.

Is someone with such poor financial history they can only borrow money with a mileage blocker fitted likely to have invested in maintaining the car well. I would look to get shot of it if I could.

loskie

more likely to be an ex hire car and blocker will be there to stop it going over prescribed miles before being de fleeted.

Not sure under what law it would be "illegal", I would suggest that the dealer may be talking pants.
Get it fixed or get a replacement. There should be some sweetener but sometimes !!!! happens and how its dealt with is what matters.

Ergates

Marshall86 wrote: »

I understand, it is illegal to sell a car with a mileage blocker, although they will of course deny knowing about it

It seems extremely unlikely they *did* know about it - what possible benefit could they have gained from doing it knowingly?

neilmcl

angrycrow wrote: »

Reject the car immediately and unwind the finance.

Sounds like a device fitted by a sub prime lender to secure the car if the customer fails to make their monthly finance payments. Should have been removed when the previous keeper sold it. To be fair to them the current dealer probably had no idea it was fitted.

Is someone with such poor financial history they can only borrow money with a mileage blocker fitted likely to have invested in maintaining the car well. I would look to get shot of it if I could.

This is probably the best advice if you no longer want to deal with Motorpoint, although I'd agree they probably had no idea of the device that was fitted.

Herzlos

Edit: I assumed this was an immobilize engine after x miles device, not a device to hide the mileage.

agrinnall

Surely you must have noticed that the mileage was not increasing?

facade

We may be talking about different things here.


A mileage blocker is a device that causes the car to register less miles than it travels, so you have a 12K P.A. lease, and you stop it recording after 11K and do the other 200K with it stopped.



Saves you the chore of getting some kid with hookey software to simply reprogram the dash & ECU when you end the lease. If he doesn't do it right, it is detectable with a full scan.





The eBay ones plug into the loom all nice, and you press one of the useless buttons, like stop-start or mute and it cycles through none-half miles-full miles.



The cheap ones stop the speedo, so half miles means you can double your ,mileage, and you don't have to use your phone gps as a speedo if you can multiply by 2.






Mileage blockers are yet another reason to avoid paying a premium for a "low mileage" car.

Marshall86

Well no, I'd had the car for 3 months. I wasn't really keeping an eye on the mileage

facade

Marshall86 wrote: »

Well no, I'd had the car for 3 months. I wasn't really keeping an eye on the mileage

If it wasn't in use you'd never know there was one fitted.




The person who fitted it to fiddle their PCP or lease should have removed it when they handed the car back and no-one would know.




The manufacturer will obviously void the warranty, as it could well have done 200,000 miles that haven't been recorded. If the BMW agent did their job right it is known to BMW now, so there is no warranty anywhere, even if the blocker is now removed.




Motorpoint will fix it, but it is worth a lot less than you presumably paid, as it has an unknown high mileage, and no BMW warranty. So you are best off with a different car.

angrycrow

Well that was an eye opener thanks for correcting my miss understand facade. Clearer a fraudulent practice and a criminal offence to use one to miss represent the mileage. Given they appear to plug into the dash board module I would guess the engine ecu mileage will differ from the dash mileage which could be a way to detect them.

Op get rid as you have no way of knowing the true mileage and any warranty will be void.