Affordability pressures have meaningfully reshaped buyer behavior this year, pushing many dealers to lean more heavily into used-vehicle operations across nearly every segment of the market.
That shift has been interesting to watch. But alongside it, there are increasingly hidden risks that dealers and consumers alike need to be aware of.
Driving the news: CARFAX data shows about 2.5 million vehicles on the road right now are suspected to have had their odometers rolled back.
That’s roughly a 14% increase vs 2024, and the pace is accelerating faster than the industry has seen in recent years.
Per CARFAX spokesperson Em Nguyen, competitive pressure in the used market is a major driver.
What they’re saying: “The used car market is especially competitive, and people don't want to spend as much money,” Nguyen said. “So scammers are thinking, hmm, how can I make these vehicles look more attractive, more desirable? And so certainly odometer fraud is a part of that as well.”
The other factor making this worse, according to Nguyen, is access.
And that’s because tools that once cost thousands of dollars are now cheaper, easier to source, and far more user-friendly than they used to be.
Case in point: During a recent demonstration, CARFAX’s Josh Ingle showed just how quickly mileage can disappear using a common mileage correction device.
“What I'm holding in my hand is a mileage correction tool,” Ingle said. “You can purchase them on the internet. Typical cost around the two, $300 range.”
In the demo, the vehicle started with roughly 150,000 miles on the dash.
But within seconds, Ingle reset the odometer to about 50,000 miles.
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In Ingel’s words: “So once I press enter, just a couple seconds go by,” he said. “You're going to see the instrument cluster go dark. When it comes back to life, we've reset the information, and now we show 50,000 miles.”
The obvious concern here is how difficult that kind of manipulation is to detect after the fact.
As Ingle explained, “There's no real way to be able to detect anything as far as what we've done internally. If you were to plug in with another device to try to tell what the actual mileage of the vehicle is, all that information has been erased.”
For dealers: This is a reminder that the basics, like physical wear checks, consistent reconditioning standards, independent inspections, and slowing deals down when something feels off, are process must-haves.
Because even though used vehicles are carrying more of the profit load than they have in years, that upside disappears quickly if loose processes expose your store to reputation damage, chargebacks, and frustrated customers months down the road.
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