Right now there is a strong demand for good used cars but as Pat Goss is about to tell us, before you buy you need to get the facts.

Pat Goss: Buying a used car can be your best value but you need to do research to make sure that it truly is a good value. And to give us some pointers, we have Emilie Voss from Carfax. Emilie welcome to Goss’s Garage. 

Emilie Voss: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Pat Goss: Alright, now, what’s one of the biggest problems that you run across as far as used cars are concerned?

Emilie Voss: It’s important when you’re buying a used car to know the vehicle's history and one of the biggest problems we see is Odometer fraud. I think a lot of people, there’s a big misconception that it doesn’t happen. That there isn’t Odometer manipulation with the digital odometers but that is not the case. The National Highway Traffic Administration estimates about 450,000 cars are sold each year with some sort of odometer roll back and that costs consumers about 1 billion dollars annually. So those numbers are staggering, Pat.

Pat Goss: Yeah. Absolutely. And there is this misconception like you just mentioned that you can’t roll back a digital odometer but that’s completely wrong. 

Emilie Voss: It is completely wrong. So as a consumer, if you are buying a used car, there is a couple things you can do to try and protect yourself against that. You want to make sure that the wear and tear on the outside of the vehicle and inside of the vehicle matches the mileage reading. And one of the good ways to do that is to have a mechanic inspect the vehicle. Sometimes they can notice things that don’t add up. Maybe somethings have more wear and tear than what the mileage reading is saying. Also, CarFax has a free tool where you can check the odometer reading to see if there’s been any recorded manipulation and also on the CarFax Vehicle History Report you can see if there’s anything flagged for a potential Odometer rollback or inconsistency. 

Pat Goss: Critical information. Emilie thank you so much.

Emilie Voss: Thank you for having me. 

Pat Goss: Alright, take care. And if you have a question or a comment, drop me a line, right here at MotorWeek.