A selection of your comments...

I saw the programme this evening ref car clocking.

Is it safer to buy a second hand car from the main dealer of that make of car, if you are trying to avoid buying a clocked vehicle.

The rationale for this being, that if the car is still under manufacturers warranty then it will probably have a dealer service history and surely the dealers can detect that an odometer has been tampered with..

Am I correct in thinking that it is safer to buy second hand from a dealer? Alan Walker

I bought a vehicle from what appeared to be a reputable dealer, the vehicle was specialist and therefore expensive but at 10 years old we did not expect pristine.

Not only did the vehicle have an invalid MOT certificate (a subsequent retest showed a fail with at least 14 advices) but it had been clocked.

Unfortunately for us the dealer or garage they used, or someone else who mysteriously took a dislike to us, set fire to the vehicle on our driveway in front of our house. (Far be it for me to cast aspersions on anyone's character but we cannot think of anyone that would carry out this seemingly random action of targeted arson. The arson took place within 24 hours of the mot station being made aware of the retest request)- the
explosion shook the house and woke our neighbours.

The fire did not destroy the vehicle fully (we had 3 big fire extinguishers and helpful guests) which meant the retest could be carried out on the rear end only.

Our insurers told us that the vehicle had been clocked, and was worth £1,000 less than we paid for it. We were also told that if we had not taken action to investigate the dodgy mot, we would not have been insured. Luckily our involving vosa meant we could at least get some of the money we paid.

Now we only go to a dealer that a trusted friend or acquaintance personally recommends!

The police investigation was inconclusive - no proof was found that the dealership or garage that carried out the mot were responsible.

The law needs to be changed. If selling a vehicle which is later found to have been clocked during that ownership were illegal, the dealership would have had to face charges for selling it to us. Kate

Have just finished watching the "car clocking" item on tonight's programme.

Can I possibly be the only person who thinks that if car mileage (as registered on the clock) was recorded each time on a car's MOT certificate (a 10 second job for the engineer) that would put paid to about 99% of this nonsense? Someone, somewhere would surely see if a car had less registered miles this year than it did last year... Just a thought. C E Scaife

Being in the car trade for many years I obviously know about clocking. What made me laugh was how you pursued the man actually doing the clocking. In my mind he's just providing a service, it is after all the person who has asked him to do the job who is doing the real wrong by selling the car to the unsuspecting public.

However what really made me laugh was what your RAC man had to say about the 116000 mile Audi A4, saying that its components would be worn out and that it had basically had its day!

This is the real root of the problem - modern cars can easily do 200,000 miles plus - it's not how many miles a car has done but the service history it has that matters. However because of programme's like yours (and there's been many) the public believe that when a car has done more than a 100,000 miles it's knackered!

The misinformed public would rather buy a car showing low miles with no history than by a car with full service history but having done over a 100,000 miles. Therefore car dealers and more to the point the public themselves pander to this desire and in order to sell their cars they clock them!

In actual fact it is the private seller who uses people to "correct" their mileage more so than the dealers because they want top money for the car, especially when part exchanging the car at a dealer. It is cheaper to clock a car before each MOT or service than it is to have it serviced properly, therefore there is no way you could find out - the only person who really knows the true miles on a car is the person who brought it from new.

Nowadays more people are doing more and more miles, high mileage cars a good value for money and certainly not knackered or worn out. If people weren't so obsessed with low mileage, then clocking would be a thing of the past, maybe you should make a program about the good value of a high mileage cars?
Simon Wall

Here in The Netherlands car clocking is a common thing. Almost every cab company is using car clocking services to get back just a bit more money for there cars. But therefore we have one by government controlled company to check mileage on cars.
I would suggest that you follow this example. In the Netherlands it's called N.A.P. (Nationale autopas). Sophie and Florian

My husband and I have recently traded in our old car for a new one. We then received a letter from a company... asking us to give details of the vehicle that we had traded in, including:

- date of purchase
- mileage when purchased
- date sold
- mileage when sold
- where vehicle purchased from
- where Vehicle sold to

We have not yet completed this as we have never heard of this type of company and don't know whether this is a genuine request. How can we find out if this is genuine? Sharon and Steve Nicholls

If you have evidence that these people are car-clocking, why is the evidence not with the police and why are the police not charging them and putting them out of business?

Surely it should be a police priority to spot the suspicious advertisements for this crime? Peter Lewis

Does not a car have an MOT certificate that will show mileage?
Viv

I have just watched your TV programme Inside Out and was interested in the article on speedometer clocking.

My father who is 82 years of age bought a quality used Mercedes Benz from a garage, at the time the car was about 1 year old, and displayed a mileage of 9900 miles. When the car became due for its first MOT test, the car failed and showed excessive wear in the suspension and the steering - this raised our suspicions about the authenticity of the mileage.

After a lot of research we proved that [the garage] had clocked this car but will do nothing about it.

I have documented evidence to prove this but so far after two years [they] will still not do anything about this. I have spoken to several people at [the garage] and all they do is fob me off telling me that all the past history of the car has clerical errors.

I am more than willing to make this evidence available for viewing, but so far nobody has the balls to take on [the garage]. Robin