My former state, OH, had pretty poor DMV employees. That got solved by creating a “Deputy Registrar” that was privately owned. You could get your plates and license renewal and apply for title. Great service, huge improvement over the former. My new state, FL, has great employees at the Tax Collectors office. Very efficient and pleasant. One private, one public, both good. The management sets the tone.
Just a comment about late fees for registration renewal. That is BS. As long as I do not drive the car with expired plates, why do I get penalized? I pay a fine for no crime. It costs the state nothing extra to renew my plates 2 weeks or 2 years later. These fines are just the state’s way of extracting more from its residents. Why not charge extra for a quality license photo? A “glamour shot” for another $20. I’d bet many ladies would pony up for THAT. At least you’d GET something for your money. Ranting - off.
It’s streamlined and better now but when I moved to MO years ago, the DMV system here was a mess. Just to license my car and get my MO driver’s license, I had to go to three different locations. And they tried to make me pay to title and pay sales tax on my car which had been owned for seven years, titled and licensed in the original state of purchase and licensed in one other state of residence in the interim. That took some sorting out but I eventually prevailed and paid only to register and tag the car. The license offices are all patronage franchises, so lots of license (pun intended) to try crooked shenanigans like that.
NY had the worse DMV that I ever had the displeasure of using. Just to register your car - I had to take a 1/2 day vacation. And sometimes that wasn’t long enough. When I moved to NH and had to register my car for the first time…I expected to be there for at least 3 hours. I was in and out in 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.
I am pretty happy with how easy it is to register or renew a vehicle in Missouri. Some of the offices in the larger cities are slow and inefficient. I am talking the take a half a day off work kind of place. The smaller ones contracted by a private agency seem to do a lot better. They are quick and you can be in and out in 15 minutes including the wait in line.
I did have one rather frustrating and dumb experience though. I bought a pair of Geo Metros a couple years ago. These were cheap and the guy was selling them as a set so I had to get both of them. I fixed one up with parts from the other and am driving it now. The other one was junk from the start and definitely junk once I pulled any worthwhile spare parts. One of the previous owners had cut the back hatch out and done a poor job of painting the thing camouflage. The hack job to the rear hatch channeled water into the underbody which was crumbling with rust. I actually did drive this home but was amazed the car didn’t collapse around me once I became aware of all the rust.
Either way, it was just a redneck lawn ornament so I cut it up and scrapped it. I hauled the remains off to a scrapyard and got paid like $50 for the metal. Luckily I had taken pictures of the scrapping as I was laughing about it being the most redneck thing ever. When you sell a car here, the seller tears off a small part at the bottom of the title and mails it to the DMV. The buyer is supposed to register the car within 30 days or be accessed a penalty.
One year later I got a letter in the mail stating that I had failed to register a motor vehicle. I didn’t even think about the junker and thought that was crazy as I was driving the other 1994 Geo Metro with current plates and insurance. To me the other one was just a pile of metal that needed to be hauled off. The DMV viewed it as something that needed to be taxed. I called them and waited on hold for like an hour thinking I was driving this car. Then it clicked that it was probably the junk car and I compared the VIN on my car to the one on their letter. They were different so I figured it had to be the junk car.
I had luckily come to realize what had happened by the time someone answered the phone. I explained that the car had been junked and no longer existed. They told me that they would make a note of this on my case and someone would respond when it was reviewed. It took them another month or more to send a repeat of the same exact letter. I called again explaining that the car was gone. Again, they made another note and again some robot of a person reviewed the case and sent out another similar letter. This happened another time or two and it seemed like I couldn’t get them to understand. I finally got it escalated higher up and someone told me I needed to provide a receipt or documentation of the scrapping. I called the scrap yard I had taken it to and they said that they didn’t even take cars. They didn’t consider this a car as it was a car cut up into many parts so it was no different than taking a load of junk mowers, toasters, window frames, etc. in to the place. I would out of luck there.
I then told the DMV that I had pictures of the scrapping process which was quite the redneck operation. They wanted to see if there were any parts I had kept with the VIN number. I had kept the dash from the other car with possible plans to paint it and replace the one in my car. I never got around to this but did see it still had the VIN tag on it so I photographed that and was given an e-mail address to send all the pictures of the car to. I sent them the pictures along with a description of how I had taken the pictures because of how redneck it looked and was told it would be reviewed within a month or two.
I finally got a notice that my case had been closed and that I owed them like $6 for some penalty I don’t really understand. I didn’t care and just paid it and went on with life. I later got a survey about my dealings with the DMV to better improve service. I should have sent it in but figured it wouldn’t change how these robots act. I figure they probably spent several hundred dollars in peoples’ time and mailings dealing with this situation all for a $6 penalty! You have to love the lack of common sense in government. It would have been in their best interest to just drop this nonsense.
The worst part is that I later found out I could have applied for a junking title at the DMV for like $2.50. This would have essentially removed the car from the tax rolls and allowed me to dispose of it without all this trouble. I later ended up with another junk Metro but it didn’t come with a title or anything so I just cut it up and hauled it in with no paper trail.
In our community, a number of decades ago a school obtained a solar water heater. It never worked, $100,000 down the tube.
A man I know bought it for a song. He had it for years and it never worked. When he died, his brother, a plumber, came from out of state to settle his estate.
He looked that thing over, and installed what I think are called bleeders, automatics, and it started working after all those years and money wasted.
Someone I know had extensive unemployment and also his wife. His wife recently got a temporary interim teaching job in Florida, which will get her the references to get a permanent job again. At present they are living in a motel, since they can’t find short term leases, and definitely cannot afford to sigh a year lease for a 3 month teaching contract.
He checked how to get their driver’s licenses in Florida before the 30 days is up. Incredibly, the rules said no d/l with a motel as an address. And, to get a d/l one MUST produce a utility bill. Simply not possible at this time. We have become totally insane.