MOT Mileage Wrong

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Goudy said:

It's quite easy for the MOT tester to record the "trip" counter rather than the actual recorded mileage, it's happened to me, twice.

Modern dashes display lots of information these days, long gone of the days of a line of numbers rolling around in the centre of one big dial.

You don't get many cars that display both trip and total mileage together on their screens, you often have to select which is displayed and if the wrong one is up on the dash and it looks like a feasible mileage for the car, that's what the tester might record.

The first time it happened I didn't notice for sometime and just left it.
The secord time I checked when they issued the print out and they grumbled a bit but changed it there and then.

There is some more info here on changing MOT mistakes.
https://www.gov.uk/getting-an-mot/correcting-mot-certificate-mistakes

My car displays the mileage until the next service for the first few seconds after switching on, if the tester was in a rush he could have recorded this rather than the odometer.

droopsnoot

I suspect what's happened here is that the MOT tester has just looked at the wrong slip of paper when they went back to the office to write up the test. They'll have made a note, and just picked up the wrong one, and the mistake wasn't noticed.

The same happened on my mother's car - she did very low mileage, had an MOT test at just under 28000 miles, then the next one was recorded as just under 110,000, which we didn't notice. I did check the next one, and it was back to 28,500. 

bluemoomoo1

Thanks for the replies, sorry I somehow could not get back into my MSE Account, so have had to re-register.

Dealership, showed me eventually via email the service book, which showed first service in 12/21 with mileage of 3728 and second service in 12/21, as 12357 KM, miles is crossed out, and the latter figure is written. Car was serviced in different town but main dealership for vehicle.

Not seen MOT Certificate, but clearly somewhere along the lines there has been an error, and this has put me off buying the car. I spoke to the DVSA and they said it could take several weeks to update this information online, since MOT was due December 22, this put me off, and I notified dealer of this within 24 hours by email.

I signed an order and paid a £200 deposit in showroom, which I was told was a holding deposit, fully refundable if they could not provide me finance. Salesman said, he would email finance details over during call 10 minutes after leaving garage when finance was approved, which was 48 hours ago, but this has still not been done, and he potentially wants me to collect a car tomorrow, pay the balance for the deposit, yet I have no idea of the finance offered by them.

Three times in emails, I have said I am not going though with the purchase, and each time have asked for a refund of the deposit paid (I now understand that there is no 14-day cooling off period when buying a car that you have seen, my mistake!) Each time the salesman has replied, he's pressured me and not really understand my stance, and completely ignored the fact I told him I was not going through with the purchase.

Now I am not naive but this is my first car purchase, I did get a little sucked into the smiling friendly salesman... but having a disability, my brain cannot cope with knowing something is not right with the mileage, and it caused me two sleepless nights.

I feel I have given the dealership adequate notice that I changed my mind and my reasons why, wrong information held online, but during a fraught call just now, the salesman is telling me the deposit is not refundable, and they have put a lot of effort into getting the car ready for me... but he'll speak to his manager. Again remember, no information on finance or APR has been shared with me.

I could chalk losing the £200 up to experience, but equally, the salesman told me the deposit was fully refundable if I did not get finance, and technically the salesman / dealership have not supplied finance details, yet he said this would be emailed over on Monday, along with bank details for me to transfer the balance of the deposit.

Salesman also said, in an email Tuesday he would send MOT / Service history over, and did six hours later, whilst also putting the car through another MOT during the day, so now the gov.uk website shows correct mileage for yesterday, but the old 12,000 odd mileage for 2021. He also claims he's spoken to the DVSA today and they will amend it, hopefully today, but this has not happened. He did the MOT after I had already said, I was not going ahead with the purchase, so he continued to pursue the sale.

I should also add, I made it clear from Tuesday I was not going ahead with the purchase, all emails retained, and he's only phoned today to discuss, not keen on discussing things on phone, prefer email as like paper trail.

I also note he added three extras on the order which were not discussed in showroom, so clearly mis-sold, agreed to extra warranty, but nothing else, bumping the price up by an extra £1200, admittedly I signed an order, but again admit caught in the moment, totally my fault, it was my dad who explained what each extra was, other than the car mats!

Surely if he's called me to say finance approved 48 hours ago, he should be sharing the APR and finance details with me? And surely I have a right to say whether I agree to them.

Any help gratefully appreciated.

Grey_Critic

Are you saying that the speedometer fitted to the car is calibrated to and registers Kilometers?

bluemoomoo1

Grey_Critic said:

Are you saying that the speedometer fitted to the car is calibrated to and registers Kilometers?

No, it's in miles currently and was at the first service, but somehow it either must have been in KM at the time of the MOT / Service a year later in 2021 - very strange.

Anyway sorted now dealership have agreed to refund deposit, actually looking back over video sent / emails last week before all this, they knew there was an issue with it on MOT / gov.uk website, and clearly didn't think to correct it perhaps in the hope a potential buyer would not notice or question it.

Purchase another car, elsewhere earlier today, mileage all tallies up!

Grumpy_chap

Grey_Critic said:

Are you saying that the speedometer fitted to the car is calibrated to and registers Kilometers?

I had a car once with digital speedometer and it was an easy operator function to switch between miles and kilometres - useful for travel to the continent.  

I can't be sure, but it is quite possible that switched to total distance travelled to display according to the chosen units for speed.

bluemoomoo1

Grumpy_chap said:

Grey_Critic said:

Are you saying that the speedometer fitted to the car is calibrated to and registers Kilometers?

I had a car once with digital speedometer and it was an easy operator function to switch between miles and kilometres - useful for travel to the continent.  

I can't be sure, but it is quite possible that switched to total distance travelled to display according to the chosen units for speed.

This is what I suspect happened.