Employees: What Do You Know About A "Kill Switch"?

www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=2632532&nav=3YeXTgyP


(New Haven-WTNH, Nov. 30, 2004 11:15 PM) _ Can you really know just how many miles are on that used car you're buying? A News Channel 8 investigation has prompted the Department of Motor Vehicles and the attorney general to look into allegations of odometer tampering.

by Team 8 Investigator Alan Cohn
Investigators say they have never seen anything quite like this -- a device wired into a car which turns off the odometer. In this case it was on a used car sold by a well known company to a Navy man in Groton.

"I love it. I do like the car."

It's the first car nick Golde has ever bought on his own. He paid almost $17,000 for a two-year-old black Chevy blazer with 34,000 miles on it and, it turns out he claims, a little something extra under the hood.

"The guy who was looking under my hood was the one who noticed," says Golde. "He noticed the wire and said what's that."

A wire he says he didn't even notice until he brought the Blazer into to get satellite radio installed.

The wire is attached to a toggle switch which controls the odometer and speedometer. Flip the switch the speed reads zero and the odometer stops counting additional miles.

"You can drive to the end of the earth and it will never count a mile," says Golde.

Where did Golde buy the car? Enterprise rent-a-car, which regularly sells used cars at special sales on the sub base in Groton for Navy personnel like Nick Golde.

"I felt I just got dealt a real bad deal," says Golde, because he has no way of knowing how many miles are really on the Blazer.

Golde says he drove to the federal credit union where Enterprise was holding another sale.

"I went and spoke to the woman who sold me the car and I pointed it out to her and she immediately went right over to where it was and she said oh, that's a kill switch. And I was like, you know what it is, and she says yea, we'd be happy to remove that for you."

"Did you ask her why there was a kill switch on this in the first place ?"
"Yes."
"What did she say?"
"I don't know why."

According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, Enterprise bought the Blazer from General Motors less than a week before reselling it to Nick Golde.

It was a previously a leased vehicle and had been registered, at different times, in New York, and Florida.

Enterprise tells Team 8 it's mechanics thoroughly checked the Blazer before it was resold and didn't discover the kill switch. However it got there, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says it's illegal.

"This type of flagrant, blatant, tampering involved here raises troubling questions that will be investigated," says Blumenthal.

Investigators from both the attorney general's office and the Department of Motor Vehicles are now looking into the situation. Among the questions: who installed the switch, why, and is this an isolated case.

"Even though it may seem like a victimless crime it has very harmful effects on a consumers ability to judge worth of a car, the fair price and the safety of driving that car for more miles in the future," Blumenthal said.

As for Nick Golde, he's angry. And although authorities are now trying to get to the bottom of the matter, he knows one thing for certain.

"I don't think this is factory installed equipment."

Enterprise says it's goal is to make sure customers are satisfied and that it has offered Golde either his money back or another vehicle.

There's been no comment yet from GMAC.

As for the attorney general, he says he's investigating a number of unrelated allegations of odometer tampering, but he hasn't heard of anything like this.

I never ran into this when I sold cars, but it sounds like someone had a personal lease on the car and installed the switch in order to be sure they didn't exceed the miles on the lease agreement. This points out a problem with enterprise, but not any intentional deceit as it would be foolish to think that enterprise employees installed the switch to avoid a weeks worth of mileage. The real problem is the "100+ point certification" that is so highly touted when you buy a car from enterprise. Unfortunately the employees doing this check are under under so much pressure to get these done, especially prior to a large credit union event such as the one described, that they are often done hastily and in a sub par fashion. I used to run into this more times than I'd like to admit, and it's terrible because it makes you look bad, I've had customers even make the comment "how come your certifications didn't pick this up." On a positive note, when problems did occur we always offered to fix the problem or refund/replace the vehicle. A word to the wise, have a trusted mechanic check out any used car you're going to purchase regardless of the source...it may cost you 50-100 bucks but it is money well spent for the peace of mind or the discovery of a potentially expensive problem.

Could your post be any more longer?

BORING

I'm sorry, perhaps you should direct your attention to the name calling threads. They're filled with short posts full of four letter words, probably more your speed.

...if you're going to insult people, at least try to use proper grammar. Otherwise, people might make fun of YOU.

What happened was that Erac bought this Blazer at an auction to sell at this special sale. It was not an "Enterprise" off rental/lease vehicle. It seems obviuous that the original leasee of the blazer rigged the switch so that they would not go over on miles. When they turned the blazer in at the end of the lease they did not yank it. Then, ERAC buys it at auction and then sells it and gets burnt. The point is that ERAC got greedy and bought some cheap auction vehicles to sell as "thiers" and got burnt when the history blew up in thier face... I am surprised it doesn't happen more often.

"While we cannot guarantee the source of this vehicle we can assure it has undergone our rigorous 100+ pt. inspection as all our vehicles do"

This is how we were suppossed to respond to anyone who questioned why the vehicle they were looking at was a make/model/options package they had never seen at a rental location...of course most AE's gave some line about how we have a leasing program that offers different makes/models than typically found at rental locations. In fact a significant amount of E vehicles do come from auction and the inventory manager spends a significant amount of time at auctions. This is how they get a decent fleet mix instead of having 6 chevy cavaliers, 6 for focus, 6 buick centuries, 6 ford taurus, and six Chevy Trailblazers at every lot.

[Disgruntled ExERACer]

Old school posters...nice to see you guys again.

Hell if I took the time to run a successful website on how much ERAC sucks and found an news article that justified my point...I think I'd post it too. Ironically, I bought my 2004 Envoy (in 2003) from ERAC and I have never had an issue with it.