Private firm to help prevent odometer fraud

The Abu Dhabi authorities will sign an agreement with a private firm to help eliminate odometer fraud.CarPass, a UAE-based company, has introduced a system that keeps track of car maintenance history, including odometer readings. Gulf News broke the story recently about the odometer fraud committed by used car dealers to show a lower mileage on the meter in a bid to get a higher price for their cars."The new system will link the government data base, car dealers and repair shops. It will collect and store various kinds of information about a car, and recall historical data on demand. This includes repair history, accident records, and odometer readings," Pascal Persoon, General Manager of CarPass Middle East, told Gulf News.Every car has a unique Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). All information associated with this VIN can be stored and recalled as needed.All garage operators must key in kilometre readings and the date of data entry when they work on a car. If the new data entered are not in line with previous readings the system will alert CarPass of a possible false data entry. The company will contact the repair shop to address the issue. Repeat offenders will be deleted from the system on the third failure to comply, explained Persoon.A new case was recently reported to Gulf News by Hatem Abdul Fatah, a 40-year-old Egyptian, who in August 2011 thought he had bought a car which had done only 85,000km."A week later he took it to the dealer for maintenance and discovered that the car had visited the workshop in May 2009 having done 168,950km," he said."I do not consider the car safe for my family use. I tried unsuccessfully to return it to the auction where it was purchased. I cannot sell it knowing it has a fake reading, and can no longer get an equitable return," said Fatah."The government entity has authorised CarPass to issue certificates of odometer accuracy," Persoon added.The system is currently being tested and will be launched by January after an awareness drive, he said. "This system is in place in Belgium and the Netherlands where a buyer gets a certificate indicating the history of car's kilometre reading, with dates of readings," Persoon said. The US and some European countries including England, Sweden and Germany use similar systems.