The Department of Motor Vehicles is the one facility that people dislike visiting perhaps even more than their dentist. Few enjoy waiting in a long line just to find out they didn’t bring the right document to register their car or update their license [Ed note: Do you enjoy this? We want to hear from you! – Pete]. And somehow, the driver’s license camera never gets your good side. Let’s talk about your worst day at the DMV: Have you ever bought a car that the DMV refused to register?
Now, some of our lovely readers are probably getting ready to point out that the DMV isn’t always known as the DMV. Indeed, some states get all fancy with it and trade “Department” for “Bureau” or “Registry,” or just call it something different entirely. Still, the concept is basically the same. If you buy a car, change your name, or move, a trip to the DMV is in order.
Most of the time, my DMV trips reach completion without any sort of hiccup. I walk in, present a signed title to a car I want to register, brandish a check to pay for taxes, and leave with a license plate and the feeling that, gee, I wish I didn’t have to pay $416 to register a car I bought for $1,000.
But there is one car that, no matter how many times I visited the DMV, I couldn’t walk out with license plates. That car is my 2012 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI. I bought this car in early 2020, while I was still relatively fresh to buying used cars on Facebook and Craigslist.
Tomorrow, I will write a story about how I finally triumphed in transferring the title to this car, so I’ll keep it short for this Autopian Asks. Due to a problem with the title that I did not notice when I bought the car, Illinois wouldn’t touch it. I went to over a half-dozen DMVs and all of them turned me away. I even went to some currency exchange stores, which Illinois allows to do basic DMV work, and none of them would touch the title.
Vermont, which still had its famous loophole going, wasn’t willing to transfer the title either, but, confusingly, did give me a registration. So, I sort of ignored the issue until about last fall when I decided that I wanted to sell the car. It took me the entire summer, but I finally triumphed.
Amusingly, a part of me now doesn’t want to sell the Volkswagen after finally beating the title issue. I might just drive the car for a few months, enjoy my win, and then sell it.
The one other time I almost found the wrong end of the DMV was when I turned in a title for a 2005 Volkswagen Passat TDI wagon that the seller signed in the wrong place. Thankfully, the seller had one of those nifty eraser pens, so he corrected the issue. The DMV worker saw the faint remnants of the seller’s old signature and was about to deny me, and then the system crashed. Apparently, this was such a big deal that the worker just put the application through anyway, and sent me on my way with license plates.
How about you? Have you ever gone to the DMV to register a car only to be turned away? What was the trouble?
Top graphic image: Volkswagen
I bought my middle daughter her first car, a 2003 Mazda Protege. It was being sold by a newly graduated college student who had bought a used Mazda CX7 to replace it. The first problem was that she got her titles mixed up and accidentally signed the CX7 to me.
We met again and got the Protege title notarized and I went to the DMV to get it put in my name. In Ohio only the seller’s signature needs to be notarized, which was, and I hadn’t yet signed myself, so I did so so at the counter. The woman behind the counter didn’t like that and insisted that my signature should have also been notarized and wrote ON THE TITLE something about it not being properly notarized and that it was invalid for transfer. She told me that I needed to get a bill of sale, get the seller and myself to sign that in front of a notary and come back.
Thankfully the seller agreed and we got it done. I returned and at some of the busier DMV locations they have a screener who checks when you come in that you have everything you need. When I showed her the marked title and told her the story she looked at me strangely and said “who did you talk to last time?” I pointed her out and she said something like “oh, yeah, of course. We’ll make sure you don’t get her again.” My turn came, I saw someone else and got the title without a hitch.