We are used to trust the odometer of a vehicle we own. We know how many miles per hour it takes, at which mileage we have to have oil change, when it is time to get gas, etc. But in some case the odometer can be a robber.

A lawyer in Arkansas noticed one day his odometer was counting miles faster than it should. When he decided to check it with the mile posts, the person noticed, and the odometer in his Honda Odyssey was 5% faster. Later on he found out he was not the only Honda owner with the odometer complains.

Many people might say: just because the odometer is a little bit faster, doesn’t mean it takes our money. But let’s think about the warranty a person has. When you buy a new car you get a 35,000-100,000 miles warranty. When it is little, it does not show so bad, but if you have manufacturer’s warranty till the vehicle gets 100,000 miles, a 5% of that is pretty significant. And when a vehicle gets broken at mile 100,050, it is hard to prove the auto is still under the warranty because of the wrong odometer.

Since last December Honda had to add these 5% to the warranties given from 2002 till 2006. The problem was fixed in the new odometers and now they show the right length. If a driver notices his odometer doing worse than it should, he needs to go to the dealership and check if it can be adjusted. If not, his warranty has to be changed according to the odometer defect.