In this article: The pros and cons of debit cards

T's a consumer's worst nightmare. You buy a used car through a classified ad or off a lot. No, it doesn't have a long-term warranty, but it looks to be in fine shape. Besides, the price is excellent. So you take it home. And everything starts to go wrong.

A new Web site, www.giggo.com, may save you the trouble. Giggo, which specializes in car loans, has a nifty "Lemon Check" feature. You type in the ID number of any used car you're thinking of buying (you'll find it on the dashboard or in the title documents); Lemon Check consults a database of 700 million vehicles and shoots back what's essentially a yes or no answer: Either your could-be car has a clean bill of health or it doesn't. That much is free. You can stop right there (and having owned a lemon, I probably would). Or, for $19.95, you can dig deeper. You can learn if the car has had major collision damage, if it was returned to the dealer for any reason and then resold, if it has a history of odometer tampering, even the number of times it's been registered -- nice to know when a seller claims a car has been pampered by a single owner.

The pros and cons of debit cards

Perhaps we've finally tired of those bursting balances on our credit-card bills. Nearly 77 million debit cards were in circulation at the end of the first quarter of 1999, a 25% hike from a year earlier, according to Visa International. Consumers said "debit" to the tune of $5.8 trillion last year. A quick look at the pros and cons of debit cards:

Pros. Convenience tops the list. Writing a check on vacation is nearly impossible without giving fingerprints, says Robert McKinley, publisher of CardWeb (cardweb.com). A debit card saves having to show ID when you buy. The absence of credit-card interest and payments are other biggies. A debit card helps avoid ATM fees, too: Use it at the grocery store and you often can get cash at the same time -- free. And you're starting to see perks: Chase and Continental Airlines now have a co-branded debit card that awards frequent-flier miles. Every $2 you spend using the debit MasterCard earns you one Continental OnePass Mile (half of what you'd earn with a credit card). Annual fee: $30.

Cons. There's no "float." When you use a debit card, funds disappear from your checking account within days. Legally, debit cards are regulated differently from credit cards: Both Visa and MasterCard limit debit-card losses to $50 (as with a credit card), but while the bank investigates, you may not get your money back for 20 days. Finally, debit cards have limits credit cards don't: Some car-rental firms, for example, won't take them. And those that do sometimes block an extra portion of your assets -- just in case.