I recently bought a Cat crawler from a used equipment dealer and noticed a sticker had been removed above the hour meter. I remember seeing stickers placed above the hour meter on Iron Planet pictures. When the hour meter was replaced they put a sticker above it showing the hours before the meter was changed. I found my crawler in the Iron Planet previous auction results and the sticker that was there showed 133 hours. Is it an offence to remove these stickers? I would think so. I have bought a lot of equipment online and never had a problem but this dealer lied about everything, I could make a list. The Cat didn't even run right for starters. Having the Iron Planet report they knew everything that was wrong with it and lied to me saying that everything worked great. I had to take the machine to Cat to have it fixed and the equipment dealer said he would help pay but now won't even answer me. I have almost all the bugs worked out of it now but am stilled P.O.ed about this. Now I can't go back to buying with taking dealers word on condition and will have to travel a lot to check equipment out.
I don't think it is an offense to remove the prev meter reading sticker, it is just offensive. The mechanical meters are often regarded as a service meter, not representative of total hours on a machine. Meters are often changed out on older equipment without a notice ever being placed on the dash. About the only thing you can do with a "As-Is, No Warranty" situation with no written guarantees or agreements is to file a complaint with the BBB, and make sure that your friends/business associates know of your dealings. JCS