I am blessed with a great (albeit small) family. My older (by 14 years) sister has always looked out for her "little" brother in many ways. Included among her many generous acts has been the practice of giving me her old car when she feels the need to buy a new one. Lucky for me she tends to buy very nice cars. She usually keeps a car for five or six years, but never seems able to put more than nine thousand miles a year on them.
So it was at the end of May that I acquired my third "new" car from her, a very nice, low mileage 2006 Toyota Avalon. This car is blue - the last car was blue - hence the blog title.
But this blog is really about the lessons learned, or relearned, about transferring the title of an out-of-state automobile. Marlene lives in PA and I live in Ohio.
We started out at 11 in the morning and our first destination was the bank to notarize the title. This took all of 15 minutes and we felt that we were on our way to succeed in our task.
The next stop (only 4 miles away) was the Title Bureau. Once again we found a good parking place and were delighted when we walked in to find no one in line. The clerk took us immediately and very efficiently began to process our title. After a few minutes he pushed the title back across the counter and announced that we needed an "out-of-state inspection". This of course could not be handled by the Title Bureau but had to be done by the License Bureau next door.
So we marched next door to find a much longer line. We were eighth in line but they had several clerks so our wait was less than twenty minutes. Once again a very efficient (and much more personable) employee waited on us. It turns out that for $3.50 he would walk out to our car and verify that the VIN # on the title matched the one on the car. This constitutes an out-of state inspection. He also mentioned that if we were hoping to eventually get license plates we would need an emissions test.
By now it was 12:30 so we decided a lunch break was in order. After a quick burger and fries at Five Guys we were off to get our E-Check. This, unfortunately, was not next door but more like ten miles away. The car had gotten a PA emissions test four weeks earlier, but this of course did not count in Ohio. Who could possibly trust a neighboring state in such matters. Lucky once again there were only two cars ahead of us the E-Check station and we passed with flying colors in only twenty minutes. Better yet the inspection was free!
It was now after 2:00 and we had no title or license plates. Another ten mile trip and we were back where we started at the Title Bureau. Our luck was holding and again we were quickly taken by another friendly clerk. This time we scored big. For a mere $18.50 we were granted a spanking new Ohio title. We were the only one's waiting while they printed the new title and when it was ready they called out or names as though there were forty people in the room.
No matter we were on the last leg of the journey as we walked next door once again to the licence bureau. One the first trip in to the License Bureau we had gotten a "jump to the front of the line card" so the wait time was minimal. We got the same clerk as the first visit and he laughed when he saw we had returned with all our paperwork. Ten minutes and $54 later we had our license plates.
Total damages to accomplish our goal: $75 in fees (Not counting lunch), 4 hours and 45 minutes and 50 miles driven.
What did we learn? One - leave plenty of time - my original estimate of an hour and a half shows the optimistic, naive nature of my personality.
Long term lesson - never rely on government bureaucracy to accomplish a task as efficiently as a private sector business would do. We met only nice, friendly, efficient people today, but they couldn't overcome the cumbersome web of out-dated, redundant, unnecessary procedures created by people who have no clue of what the needs of the customer might be. If it takes almost 5 hours to transfer a title and buy license plates, think what would happen if government officials were in charge of our health care industry. Big government is always inefficient and wasteful.
By the way - if this is the biggest problem I face, I must live a pretty blessed life!
Epilogue: Our original blue car ( a 1999 Lincoln Continental) was listed for sale on Craigslist last Sunday - we got three responses by Wed and it was sold by Thurs. I bet the State of Ohio could have done the same thing in less than 60 days if they really tried.
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