The odometer stopped working and went blank. Called Honda dealership and scheduled service appointment. Before appointment I did checking on internet and saw that others had reported similar issues and they found it was a burned out bulb. When I dropped it off to be repaired assumed it would be a simple fix. However was notified by the shop that it was not a light bulb. It was a short within the odometer itself. They indicated that there were two ways to fix it; 1) replace the odometer and re-set it back to ZERO, 2) Send a new instrument panel along with the old one to the Honda plant in California and have them retrieve the data from old odometer and transfer it to the new one (as it turns out the odometer data is not stored anywhere else except for inside the actual odometer). Long story short, they were not able to retrieve the data due to the malfunction of this part. Since I did not have a recent odometer reading, state laws require that the dealer re-set the new odometer to ZERO. Now I have a Element that is only 3 years old, and will now be identified as a TMU (True Mileage Unknown) Vehicle. This means that the trade in value of my car has now dropped drastically. Since the actual mileage can not be determined, at trade in any dealer will low ball the trade in value. In fact the longer we keep the car the lower the trade in value would get. As we saw it we had three alternatives; 1) keep the Element and drive it until the wheels fall off, 2) trade it in now and take our hit on the trade in early to try and maximize the value, 3) keep the Element and fight with Honda Corporate to get some compensation for the lost value. We decided to take our losses early and so we traded it in on a new 2007 Element. We did take a loss on the trade in value, but the dealership we have been loyal to, gave us a better deal than we were really entitled to. We are planning to still fight with Honda Corp to get some compensation as we still ended up not getting as much trade in value as we should have.