Largest odometer gap between contract and reality?
 

I've seen some variance, including having the odometer reflect less than the contract, but this week took the cake. The contract said 8200 miles. I didn't notice until I returned, but the odometer was > 33,000. I pointed this out to the return agent and they dutifully logged the mileage as 8300 miles. (I stopped on the way out to report the discrepancy)

I had checked the car in the app and would have swapped it out if I knew it was 33k miles.

A few weeks ago, the Avis Now app showed I had a Linc/Caddy of some sort with 2x miles on the clock. As I pulled out, I was on the phone but remembered thinking it didn't feel that fresh. I remembered to look at the odometer a bit later and it was 11,x3x. I don't know how they can manage to get it off by >10k!

I had a similar issue on Hertz a few weeks ago where it was off by 8k. it was 18,xxx instead of 10,xxx.

Most likely someone looked a trip odometer reading rather than the main odometer reading by mistake. When the trip odometer has been reset lately, and reads 205, no one's going to make that mistake, but when the trip odometer hasn't been used by a few renters in a row, it can get high enough to look like it could be the main odometer reading, and on some cars it's not obvious enough to someone in a hurry which odometer value you're looking at at the moment.

Fully agree... But the back-end software should prevent this. It should see the mileage is less than the last reading and spit out an error to double-check the number. If the odometer reading is less than the last few readings, or under the outgoing by 2000+, it should require secondary confirmation.

Sure, most rentals are unlimited mileage and it doesn't really matter. But: on the off-chance I get a 1-way that's way off, I'd be very upset if I had to fight due to odometer inconsistencies. Or with Hertz: They're known to cut-off rental privileges for people with multiple "high-mileage/day" rentals.

In Croatia, I've had a couple of cases where the mileage was waaay off between the contract and the odometer...by 100 000 km!
Apparently, this was due to a bug in the system where if a vehicle is above 100 000 km, it resets to 0 in some instances.

This happened to me previously at IAH.

Had a BMW 528 that was checked out saying I had 9k miles, when it really had almost 28k.

When I returned it, the system wouldn't let him check it back in and required me to go up to the main desk. The lady at the Main Desk said, oh if you drive over 500 miles, we do a manual return to verify, but then she was like you drove it 19,000 miles in a week? I said obviously not (really had driven like 500-700). She was able to fix it, but I was amused at the difference.

Had a similar situation where the contract said it had 3,000 miles, but I returned it and it actually had 13,000 (I never even looked). Guy checking it in made me go to the counter, they laughed and said it wasn't possible to drive that much and they'd take care of it.

I wasn't worried, it's unlimited miles, but it is curious the system would let you go backwards in miles because of an obvious mis-key by someone.

In ATL recently, used the app to confirm my rental and see options to change. Some car came up with a mileage figure. Refreshed to see if another option was available, but it was the same car (license plate, space), but with a different mileage. I was intrigued, so refreshed again to the same car, but with yet a different mileage.

When I picked up the car, the odometer was completely different (like 23k while app showed anywhere from 2k to 15k miles). When I returned, I mentioned to the woman and she said, "yeah, that happens a lot." Fortunately, I set the trip meter and told her I had only driven about 60 miles and was, therefore, below the fuel service limit. She just waived the fee due to the mileage discrepancy.