Why we are still in Tucson, my CA DMV rant

If you've opened this, you must be in the mood for a rant, I warned you and you opened it...so here goes. 

First off, I freely admit that Ken and I could have saved ourselves all of this trouble by requesting a copy of the title for our quad in the months before we left California. We made some assumptions about technology, connectedness and efficiency that unfortunately came nowhere close to reality, but I digress. That happens when I'm not in my right mind.

As you may be aware, we are on our way to Guatemala. When we arrived in Tucson, we went to the AZ DMV the next day on the 15th to register our vehicles at Ken's parents address. We had to have the title in our names for all 3 of our vehicles (Fj Cruiser, quad, trailer) to cross the border. The experience was REALLY different than I expected - we were in and out of emissions testing, license photo and issue, and in-depth meeting with the registration station in 45 minutes. They are a "title holding" state, so we got the title to our new trailer immediately. The guy that sold us the FJ has two names (one Chinese) so we were told we needed him to send us a notarized affidavit that the names both belong to him and we could come back and get that title immediately.

However, at some point we lost the title to our quad. Here’s where the overly optimistic assumptions come into play. Having the VIN and sticker for the vehicle, the thought was that the AZ DMV could simply enter the VIN and through a nationally connected system, see that we were the owners and re-issue the title in AZ. Nope. Somehow, law enforcement can track vehicles across state lines and we all know government seems to know everything about everything about us these days….except if two DMVs need to share information. That takes one issuing a piece a paper and physically sending it to the other.

Not ideal, but okay. I call CA DMV (which Google for some reason identifies as North Carolina DMV when you dial the number– try it) and a very helpful gentleman tells me not to pay attention to the website “rush title” process, that they just moved it to a new building, and the website hasn’t updated yet. He says if I send it overnight, it will take up to three days to process and if I include an overnight envelope, they will send it right back. So I download and fill out the paperwork, send an extra $15 for “rush title” and we sent it through UPS.

Using the tracking number, we saw that they accepted the paperwork on Monday the 19^th at 9 a.m. Great, so they have it and are working on it. Fast forward to Friday the 23^rd and the multiple times each day in between we checked the return envelope tracking number and the disappointment of realizing it hasn’t been shipped back yet.  Ken called the CA DMV and discovered that  A) they couldn’t track where it was in processing or estimate when it would be sent back and B) the process was actually 8-10 days. Yowie.

Plan B, we set up a Power of Attorney with a friend in Sacramento and she was in Merced with her husband, so she went into the Merced DMV office to inquire about our title and/or re-submit if it was lost somewhere. She had good things to say about how nicely they said it, but essentially even in person, there was no way to get the title the same day. They couldn’t say where the original request might be, but offered the helpful tip that if the check had not yet been cashed, they haven’t even started working on it. (It had not been cashed.) They would certainly takes the forms and money again, but they would then just send to the Sacramento office (the only place they work on titles) and start the 8-10 days again. Grrrrrr. We didn’t re-submit.

On Tuesday, May 27^th, we got a call from them. Oh happy day!! We were really excited, things were moving. For some reason, even though the VIN and sticker were on the paperwork, they wanted to clarify that we were asking for the quad title, not the title for the scooter we own which shares a common brand. Whatever, at least we knew it was being worked on. After clearing it up for them, we were sure the title would be in our hands the next day.

Today is Thursday, the 29^th. The check cleared!!! Fingers crossed.