I just received my annual car insurance documents and noticed that the annual milage was dead on. I was surprised to see the actual miles as I was low-balling the numbers when I sent in the survey form.
So then I started thinking where they got the information from, and I also just visited some friends that had a complete report from Car Fax on their new car. I put two and two together and realized that the quick stop oil change place recorded the mileage before servicing the car.
Is that legal for the Car Insurance Company to have access to that information?
Can you get an oil change without giving them your mileage?
Well, it depends on where you go for the oil change. If you do it yourself, there’s no record of it being done at all. When I’ve been to places like JiffyLube, they note it from the car odometer. When I’ve been to Walmart to have mine done, they ask me what my mileage is, and chances are (at least if they’re busy) they won’t actually check. Last time I just told them the general mileage (108,000 instead of 108,500) since I figured they’d check it them selves, but the sticker in my car indicates 3,000 miles from what I told them, not what it actually was.
Maybe someone else can address the privacy issue. I thought oil change companies had to put some fine print on the invoice about information sharing. Maybe not.
BTW, lying to the insurance company about your mileage in order to get a lower rate, is self-defeating. If you have a claim against your insurance, and they do some checking, they’ll discover that you gave them inaccurate information when you applied for the policy (or renewed it). Then, if I’m not mistaken, they’ll turn around and invalidate your policy, and refuse to pay on it.