A man from Schomberg, Ont. is looking to be compensated after the odometer in his recently-purchased used SUV jumped by about 90,000 kilometres following a panel repair.

Niall Collum purchased a 2007 Land Rover LR3 in September of last year. He said that shortly after leaving the dealership parking lot, there was a problem with his instrument panel.

“The cluster, which is the odometer reading and where the lights are, it started flickering over and back, on and off,” he told CTV News Toronto.

The dealership agreed to repair and replace the panel, but the problems persisted. After a few months, a new panel from Land Rover was installed. That’s when Collum noticed that his odometer reading jumped from about 188,000 to 278,000.

“It was three more years mileage on it,” he said. “The car is now worth about half of what I bought it for.”

Jaguar Land Rover Canada told CTV News Toronto it appeared as though Collum had a “non-authorized odometer change” and recommended he go back to the dealership.

The dealership has agreed to work with Collum, but said they are having trouble contacting the person who traded in the SUV in the first place to verify the mileage.

“The vehicle was traded into our dealership,” the company said. “If the odometer reading is incorrect, it’s something we take very seriously. We have involved OMVIC, the UCDA and the customer who traded the vehicle in to us to expedite a solution.”

In February 2018, a GTA man said his Range Rover’s odometer reading increased by about 180,000 kilometers after he had his instrument panel repaired.

“When I picked up the vehicle they shrugged their shoulders and said ‘there is nothing they can do because the (car’s) main computer says it has those kilometres,’” John Fitzgerald said last year.

Land Rover Canada told CTV News Toronto at the time that when the instrument panel was replaced with the used part, the vehicle’s onboard computers copied “their stored mileage to the second-hand part.”

Fitzgerald was told he would need to replace three computer modules in his vehicle to restore the original odometer reading. The cost of the repairs would be more than $6,000.

Collum told CTV News Toronto that while everyone claims to be ready to help him, his case has been dragging on for six months. He believes he deserves compensation for the extra 90,000 kilometers he believes the SUV has.

“If they did take it in on trade, it’s their job to know this,” he said.

With files from CTV News Toronto’s Pat Foran.