My grandson who is 19 wanted to purchase a used vehicle from a private party. We went to see the car and gave the seller a $50 down payment. We then came home and ran a Carfax report. It turned out that the vin number on the title and the vin number on the vehicle were one letter off. We reported the problem to the seller. It took him several trips to the Division of Motor Vehicles, but he finally got the appropriate vin number on the title. If we had not used Carfax, we would have given the seller the money for the car, and we would not have been able to register it. I believe that using Carfax was one easy step that saved us a lot of problems.