Friday, February 24, 2006

"And brave the storm to come, for it surely looks like rain..."

(Thank you , GD)
So, I recently moved to Florida with my Special Lady and our two daughters and our two cats...We brought a car(Clementine) with us...We are trying to get the car registered in Florida...Florida is being a HUUUUUUUUUGE pain in the ass about this...Allow me to share the story so far...I went on the State Of Florida DMV website(thank YOU internets), to get a sense of the cost of registering the vehicle, and what sort of documentation I might need...I should have known pretty quickly that this was going to be a NIGHTMARE(okay, that's probably an exaggeration, there are faaar worse things in life, but hey, I'm a bit dramatic, in case you hadn't noticed ?), when there is this very vague fee of one hundred dollars that one has to pay for no apparent reason other than (I think) that you are not transferring a registration from another car(it's really confusing, or I'm REALLY dumb, or probably both), it sounded suspiciously like the three hundred dollar fee that I had to pay when I moved to Los Angeles for bringing a car into the state, a fee that was found to be illegal a few years later and I received a refund of my 300 bucks. Wow, that was a REALLY long, rambling sentence...I'm not sure that it's done, but I think I should start a new one anyway. I pushed my fears and suspicions aside and my Special Lady and I traveled on the the office of the Leon County Tax Collector, for she is the keeper and distributor of car registrations and license plates...We found the building and went through the metal detectors( there was a slight delay as I had to explain to the security men that I had a metal plate in my collarbone from a cooking accident), and found the Tax Collectors Office...We waited for a few minutes and perused the vast number of possible license plate designs that we could choose to adorn our dear Clementine with: there are the numerous Florida sports franchises, several species of swimming animals, the Space Shuttle Challenger...The list goes on and on(my Special Lady and I are currently at a standstill, as she would like a plate celebrating the manatee, and I would like one celebrating the scantily clad coeds of Florida State University- gotta support the team, right ? But I digress)...So, someone finally comes to help us, and she glances over our paperwork and asks if we have the title to the car... I was going to answer "Clementine; The Kickass Love Machine", but then I realized that she was talking about the ownership title to the car...We explained that the car was technically owned by GMAC until we made our thousandth payment on it, which should be sometime in 2025...She then proceeded to tell us that we needed to send this form(she handed us the form) to GMAC and they needed to send her the title, so she could regsiter the car in Florida and then send them back the title. She said the once she received the title, she would contact us about getting the car registered...We took the form and left, but I was haunted by a question: Why spend the time to setup a website with FAQs and all that about registering cars, and NOT MENTION this deal with an out of state lien ? Obviously it happens enough that they have a preprinted form for it, so wouldn't it help to give the potential registerees the heads up ? Is that so far fetched ?(Mmmmm....Far fetched)...So, we go home and I fax this form over and I get a confirmation that they received my fax and then we wait...And wait...And wait...And wait....And wait...And finally I call up the tax collector and ask for an update, and they tell me that when they receive the lien, I will receive a letter telling me how to proceed...Well, on Wednesday, I finally get the letter, and it tells me that My Special Lady and I must take all of our paperwork and Clementine to this OTHER office of the Tax Collector, so they can inspect the VIN on the car and all that...Now, to be fair, on the letter it did say that they would inspect the VIN: WEATHER PERMITTING, and yesterday, when we left the house, it WAS overcast, but we thought the rain might hold out...Of course it didn't...By the time we got to the Tax Collectors office, it was POURING !!! We went in anyway, figuring that there was probably some forms to fill out and such...Of course, we couldn't do anything until they inspected the VIN...My Special Lady asked if they would be able to check it if the rain let up,and the finely coiffed ladies behind the counter just kinda stared at us, so that was clearly a NO...So we left and we will try again on Monday...Now, here is my problem with this process...We have been in Florida somewhere around 60 days or so, I would say that it has probably rained for parts of 40 0r 45 of those days..If you are in a place where it rains that much, and you have a situation where you may need to inspect cars...Wouldn't it be good to have a garage at the place that this needs to happen ? Or a tarpaulin or a canopy, perhaps ? I mean, is that not common sense ? It just seems so stupid !! AAARGH !!!!

6 comments:

DoctorMama said...

That's what you get for moving to a state where everybody is retired and people plan their WEEKS around things like car registration.

Paticus said...

Oh, if only I had known !! Oy vey !!

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