Certified pre-owned, decoded: what the warranty actually covers

A history report is not a verdict — it's a set of dates. Read the dates in order and the car tells you what happened to it: where it lived, how hard it worked, and whether anyone lied about the odometer.

Start at the bottom. The oldest entry is the in-service date, and everything after it should march forward in time and in mileage. Any line where the odometer goes backwards, or where a year passes with no entry at all, is worth a phone call before a deposit.

The four lines that should stop a deal

• A branded title. Salvage, flood, or lemon-law buyback. The car may drive perfectly and still be worth 40% less at resale — and much harder to insure.
• An odometer rollback flag. Even a single inconsistent reading means the mileage in the ad is a guess.
• Airbag deployment. It means the impact was hard enough to matter. Ask for the repair invoice, and if it doesn't exist, walk.
• A gap of two years and 30,000 miles. Somebody skipped maintenance, or had it done somewhere that doesn't report. Budget for the catch-up service.

A clean report on a neglected car is still a neglected car. The report tells you what was recorded, not what was done.

What a good report looks like

Regular entries every 5,000 to 10,000 miles from the same one or two shops. One owner, or two with a clean handoff. Registration in a state that doesn't salt its roads. And at the end, an odometer reading that matches the listing to the mile.

That's the whole method. It takes four minutes, it's free on every Ravinoo listing, and it is the single highest-value thing you can do before spending thirty thousand dollars.