Paperwork you gotta love!

I have always hated the DMV. In the town where I grew up, the DMV meant queuing by Window A, being sent to wait in the line for Window E and then of course going to Window H to pay, no Visa cards accepted. The whole process could day hours. In fact on one occasion in particular, I arrived at the DMV at about 1:30 and had not reached the first window by closing time and was told to come back the next morning. Needless to say, I got to the DMV the next morning at a quarter after 7 (they open at and there was already 15 people in line ahead of me.

Did I mention that I hate going to the DMV?

In North Carolina the DMV is separated into drivers services and vehicle services. ID and Drivers Licenses are handled by the Drivers License office. Titling and registration are handled by the License Plate office.

I am in the process of selling my sister’s car (which is titled to my parents) to a friend. My parents located the title and signed in the appropriate fields and then mailed me the title. On the way to the NC plate office, my friend asked me to review the title and make sure all the missing fields were complete. As he read me the odometer reading, I started writing, digit by digit. Sure enough, I realized about 5 seconds too late that I should have started in the second space instead of the first. The car has about 60k miles on it, not 600k. I crossed off the mistake and wrote the actual odometer reading. Whoops! I shouldn’t have done that.

The nice lady at the License Plate office tells us that she’s not able transfer the title because the odometer statement had been altered. My parents (who are the sellers) would need to complete a separate form releasing the DMV from liability from the false odometer reading. Since my parents live out of town about 3000 miles away, this would involve a lot of fedex and notary fees. She hands us a packet of forms and tells us to come back when they are completed. Hopefully, our second visit will go smoother than the first.

Tags: dmv