Yesterday, major milestone: I sold my boat.
I went to the DMV with the guy that bought it. It reminded me why I am a libertarian.
“Ok, so I sold this gentleman my boat and we just wanted to finalize the paperwork.”
“Wait?! Why are there two sets of paperwork??!” asked the woman at window 12.
“Well, one is for the trailer and one is for the boat.”
“Huh?! Oh, yeah. I see.”
“I know, it is kind of confusing.”
“Uh-uh. Oh no you didn’t!”
“What?”
“This boat has a VLT stop on it!”
“What?”
“It has a VLT stop on it. It says you owe money. You can’t transfer the title or do nothing until you pay $1500.”
“Huh? Are you sure?”
“Yeah I’m sure! I do this everyday! How could I not be sure?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Ok. Let me go talk to my manager.”
***
“Ok, my manager says he needs to talk to Sacramento. You guys can go have a seat.”
We went and had a seat.
***
The woman called us back to window 12.
“Ok. You need a letter head from Los Prados Towing saying the boat was released.”
“Oh. I see. Well, it was towed by that company a few months ago. But I paid $500 and got it back.”
“Well, according to the DMV it’s still there. That’s why there’s a VLT stop on it. You can’t do nothing with the boat until you get a letter from them.”
“Ok, what about the Trailer. At least can I transfer the trailer?”
“Ok. Oh no. Wait. That has a VLT stop on it, too.”
***
I drove from the Redwood City DMV to Los Prados Towing in San Mateo. I was worried they would say that I still owed them money or something. But, they didn’t.
“What? I don’t know what they’re talking about. Yeah, I’ll write the letter for you.”
***
Then I drove back to the DMV. I had to get a new number, and then wait, and then explain the situation to a different person at window 11 who was somehow angered by the complexity of the situation.
“Yes?”
“Hi, how you doing?”
“Ok. What is it?”
“Oh, well I sold this gentleman my boat. We just wanted to finalize the paper work but there was a VLT stop on it. So I went to the towing company and cleared it up. Here’s the letter. It clears both the boat and the trailer.”
“What!? Let’s handle this one at a time. Let me see the boat paperwork.”
“Here you go.”
“Ok, let me go talk to my manager.”
***
“Ok, he needs to talk to Sacramento. What about your trailer?”
“Yeah, here’s the paperwork for that.”
“Ok, this has a VLT stop on it too! Oh. Well, we can’t do anything. You need to have the trailer cleared too! By the same towing company!”
“Uh, well yeah. That’s cleared on that same letter.”
“Oh. Alright. Hold on.”
***
“Ok. You guys can have a seat. My manager needs to talk to Sacramento. I’ll call you when he’s done.”
***
“Hey you guys.”
I walked up to window 11. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, I’m going on my break.”
“Uh.”
“Oh, well my manager needs to fax something to Sacramento, and then they’ll fax something back. It’s going to take a while. You guys have a seat.”
“Ok.”
***
Suddenly the manager stood up in the middle of the office area. “Hey guy!”
“Yeah.”
Then he pointed to some other window. “She’ll help you.”
I walked over there. Oh, and so did the guy who bought my boat.
The woman at the other window didn’t even look at me. “You guys go have a seat.”
Since she didn’t even look at me I just stood there. Finally when someone lined up behind us she looked up and saw that I was still there.
“Oh, yeah, go have a seat. Sacramento hasn’t cleared it yet.”
***
After about ten minutes the woman called us to the window.
“It’s cleared now.”
“Ahhhhh.”
Then we finalized the paper work. Then I drove away with $300 in my pocket, about three hours after having first set foot in the DMV.
***
Before all that I towed my boat down to Palo Alto to the guy’s house. I somehow backed it in to his narrow driveway. I breathed a sigh of relief. The hard part was over, I thought.
On the way to the DMV the guy was concerned about all kinds of issues related to the transfer of title. For one thing I had lost the pink slip for the trailer.
“Oh, don’t worry,” I told him. “There’s not going to be any problems or complications whatsoever. Just watch.”
3 responses so far ↓
1 Allen // Oct 28, 2008 at 5:21 pm
The Prophet Ian has spoken. DVM is a freakin’ entertainment center. Seems like a good place to make a movie to me for some reason…especially if you want lots of bureaucracy and pissed off people in the movie. Oh, and waiting.
2 ally // Oct 28, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I hate the DMV…sounds like your trip there was almost as bad as my weekend at Kaiser—3 ER trips in on effing weekend! And same nonsense–fill a form out, go sit down and wait & wait & wait…lather, ,rinse & repeat….
3 Ian Bowman // Oct 31, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Allen – Haha. Yeah. It would be like that Andy Warhol movie “Empire”: a moving picture of the same thing for 9 hours.
ally – Seriously. That’s the thing I hate the most: when they tell you to wait and don’t tell you how long you will need to wait.
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