"jmcquown" wrote in message
...
(I apologize if I already posted about this. Had some problems with
individual.net the other day. All this happened last Friday. It's a long
rant, and I apologize for that, too.)

/begin rant

My car tags & registration are coming up for renewal in April. It's
registered in Tennessee. (I still have an apartment there.) It occurred
to me I may as well go ahead and register it in SC. But my car title is
locked in a file cabinet in TN and I'd need it to register the car in SC.

So I called the DMV in Tennessee to request a duplicate title. The woman
was extremely rude. (I understand she's a harried and possibly underpaid
government employee, but hey! at least she has a job. Would it have
killed her to be polite?) She cut me off mid-sentence and informed me I
can't possibly have the title to my car because it still has a lien on it.
I said no, I paid the loan off in May, 2004. She came within a fraction
of an inch of calling me a liar. She said (snippily) I couldn't possibly
have paid it off because that's not what her computer shows.

We all know computers are never wrong, don't we? (GIGO - garbage in,
garbage out.) She asked "What bank do you send your payments to?" (Note:
she used the present tense, not past tense.) I sighed. I said I made my
last payment in 2004 and it was financed through the dealership, not my
own bank. I sent the payments to the dealership. She stiffly informed me
there's no way I paid off the loan for the car.

[I ask you, if I still owed money for this car don't you think the
dealership would have come after me by now? My address (in TN) didn't
change from the time I financed it to the time I paid it off. Neither did
my phone number. If I owed them money they'd have been tracking me
down... especially since the final payment was over $6000.]

So I called the dealership. Oh, we don't keep records longer than 3
years. WHAT?! You have no record of me buying a car from you in 2003 and
paying it off in 2004? Nope, sorry. (In this wonderful world of modern
technology, their computers only go back 3 years?! My god, I was able to
track down a life insurance policy issued in 1947 but these people can't
tell me I bought a car from them in 2003. How utterly ridiculous!)

The woman at the dealership asked me what bank. I again patiently
explained I financed it through them, I didn't get a loan from *my* bank
otherwise I'd be talking to my bank. She said sure, she understood that,
but what bank was the dealership using then? Now how the hell am I
supposed to know that? More importantly, why don't *they* know that?!
When I was making payments I just put my check in the supplied envelope
with the payment coupon and mailed it. I don't remember the address it
went to; we're talking 5 years ago. She suggested I call my insurance
company.

So I called my insurance company. They were very helpful, insofar as
possible. They gave me the name of a bank that probably handled the
financing for the dealership at that time. But that bank doesn't seem to
exist anymore. Great, what do I do now? She suggested I call the
corporate offices of the car dealership and explain the problem. huge
sigh

Okay, so I called the corporate office of the dealership. You know by
this time I was tired of trying to explain the situation. The woman I
spoke with there said someone from the dealership where I bought my car
would have had to sign the title over to me. They probably forgot to
inform the state. Great, what do I do about that? They don't keep records
older than 3 years! She didn't know what to tell me.

I'll call MY bank tomorrow to see if they can get me a copy of the check I
wrote in 2004 paying off the car. That might give me a clue to work with.
(Hopefully my bank keeps records longer than 3 years! LOL At least it's
still the same bank, wasn't bought out or subject to the bail-out.)

Meanwhile, come April I'll just register the car in TN again. Legally I
can do that; I'm still a resident of TN. But what a huge bureaucratic
nightmare this one seemingly simple thing turned into!

/end rant

Jill \

I am so sorry, Jill. Sending you calming purrs. The one thing about these
giant bureaucracies I really hate-- besides the fact that they screw up all
the time -- is that they are totally incapable of admitting it. They never
back down from their asinine position, whatever it is, and you are left
scrambling or hanging out to dry.


--
Theresa and Dante

Stinky Forever: http://pets.webshots.com/album/125591586JWEFwh