It's true. It has now been 37 days since I brought my car into this state and I still do not have license plates. I drove into California on the late afternoon of December 29 and visited your office the first of many times the morning of December 30. I have since spent hours in your office, on the phone and performing other endlessly maddening tasks to jump through your hoops.
Perhaps my mistake was that I paid you too soon. Within 24 hours of bringing my new-to-me, never-registered-in-my-name car into your budget-crunched state, I had written you a check for nearly $1,500 dollars to cover sales tax for a car purchased in another state and registration fees. Perhaps if I held out you would be workable.
You claimed I needed a smog check although my car's specifications clearly state it passes the California emissions standards. Then I bring you the paperwork (again, within 24 hours of bringing my car into the state) and instead of entering the information, your dolt of an employee prints off a temporary registration stating I still need a smog check and scribbles that out in pencil. So I guess for those 3 seconds he knows I've taken care of my "
responsibility," but that doesn't help the next time I call or visit your not-so-helpful department.
You required that a
DMV employee (or some other inaccessible official) verify the VIN, odometer and who knows what else on my car. Again, on my immediate visit to my local field office, I am
informed this cannot happen at a convenient time because you are short staffed. I guess I can understand that. I need to come back on Wednesday or Thursday between 2 and 4, but not this Wednesday because you're not doing them and not this Thursday because it's a holiday. Then you can only give me a temporary permit that's valid for two days because with the new year you are apparently switching to a new program. Thank goodness good old Utah has taken care of me by providing some kind of temporary license.
So a week and a half later you
verify my VIN while having the same number of employees in the office as you did the first day I came. Thankfully I am granted a temporary permit until the end of February. Of course, rather than entering and updating the smog and verification, you just staple it all together and hand it back to me because you "wait until everything is taken care of before putting the info in the system." Whatever.
Now for the kicker. You need evidence of previous registration (I did not register the car in Utah because I live in California, duh) or the title. Hello, I don't own the car! No one in this "thing" obsessed state pays for anything with cash. There is no other option in everyone else mind but to finance, so why should it be any surprise that I did the same? I don't have the title because the car isn't officially mine. The bank owns the title, dimwit. So after talking to the fools in my field office, I call the state
DMV to verify procedure. Of course first they tell my I need to get a smog check. I swallow my anger and proceed. I'm told that the
lien holder has to send the original Utah title to California, where you create a CA title and send that back to the bank and I can finally get my plates. Stupid, but fine. So I call my credit union and they say okay, they'll send it to CA.
A week and a half later I call Sacramento to check the status of this mess. No, there's not evidence of a title, but I still need to get my smog check. Thanks for the tip. Then
this
guy tells me duh, I don't need a title. I financed it so of course I don't have one. THANK YOU! I go back to the
DMV field office and have another pointless visit where they stand by what they've said.
Soon after I get a letter from the dealership saying the title clerk there has sent my title work to the local
DMV field office. Oh, I guess a Utah title doesn't even exist in my name yet. Fine. I go the to
DMV again
and of course they haven't received it. So I call the dealership and learn she sent the title the same day she sent my letter. So either the
DMV has lost it, or I now have a beef with the postal service. Either
scenario is plausible. Of course the title woman didn't get the letter certified, so there's no way of knowing what happened to this title. Great.
I wait until the end of the week, still no title paperwork. After brainstorming with my Utah title friend, she decides to call the California
DMV and figure out what is going on. Of course the local field office where she sent the paperwork only has an
internal
line (whatever that means), so she can't call them. Instead she talks to some rude woman (I guess you would call her the
DMV stereotype) who doesn't know what's going on, is not interested in the problem, tells her there's no real point in the discussion because I still need to pass a smog check and she can't tell her anything anyway because she's not the registered owner or
lien holder. Thank you. Very helpful.
Forget that she is, in fact a representative of the current,
official legal owner because the title is still in the dealer's name. I can't legitimately register the car in Utah because I don't have a Utah address and therefore can't get the "alternate" verification from the Utah
DMV stating I am the registered owner and who my
lien holder is. And we can't get it titled in California because every blasted person I talk to says we need to do something different.
Get your story straight!!!
I visit your office one last time and after making it clear how upset I am, practically have to force your employee to enter the smog and verification information so I don't have to hear about again.
So for 37 days I have been trying to follow the law. You have your money, I've jumped through the hoops, and you have lost legal paperwork. Thank you. I could have been like many others and registered my car in another (cheaper) state and dealt with you when it came time to renew my registration. I'm just trying to get my safe, clean and fully operational car legal.
Perhaps I should not have purchased my car out of state, but I checked with your website (which is only slightly helpful) and thought I had my bases covered. Clearly I don't. Now we have to get a duplicate title and keep our fingers crossed that once I receive it and walk it into your office that you don't decide you want something else instead.
Yes, this is an actual picture of my actual (very dirty) car. 
This is my Christmas present. Hooray! I love it. Troy totally surprised me. We've talked about getting a second car, but I'd been putting it off because it's such a hard decision. So he just made the decision for me. Yay! It drives beautifully and has all kinds of fancy things about it. It even talks to me. Well, I talk to it and it just repeats the command, but it makes me feel special nonetheless.