My daughter had her first job, had saved her money, and was ready to buy her first car. As her dad I wanted to be sure that she spent her money wisely, so I signed up for one month of CARFAX. It was a HUGE help! Kate decided she wanted a compact SUV, and we found a Jeep Liberty that she liked. We checked the CARFAX and found out that it had been taken to a repair shop twice in the last three months to have the front suspension looked at, but that no repairs were done. A few days later we heard that it needed major repair work. Thank you CARFAX! So Kate kept looking and I kept running CARFAX reports. All we needed was the license plate number, and almost every car ad shows either the front or the back bumper well enough to read the plate. Then we found two different Honda CR-V's on two different used car lots. They were the same year, had almost exactly the same mileage, and about the same price. They were essentially identical. We ran a CARFAX on both cars. One report showed regular service at a dealership with all scheduled maintenance performed on time and no major repairs. The other had almost no information so we didn't know if it had been properly cared for. Guess which car she bought? After this experience we will never buy a used car without a good CARFAX report!