How can I help you? at Daniel Spisak on Technology

I just needed to share what I just learned because I myself can’t believe it. Long story made short, I had not received a license renewal notice from the DMV for my cars tags which expired near the end of this month. So, being the bright person I am I try to look into the DMV website to see what my fees are for the BMW.

Except, if you go to the DMV website and try to lookup your fees online you have to have a RIN number to enter in along with your license plate number for their system to show you your registration fee information. But I never got a renewal letter from the DMV, so I have no RIN. So no online help there.

Some perusal of the DMV site does net me a 800 number to call. I call it and am immediately in voice menu jail, however the system wasn’t designed by Kafka so after about two minutes I was able to navigate to the “Talk to carbon-based lifeforms” option. After waiting on hold for about another minute a decently nice guy comes on the phone to help me out. I explain I had gotten no renewal notice and that I know my registration is probably due ASAP. The man then tells me “Oh, well the computers here are confused because it shows the title for your car was transfered in 2005″

WHAT? THE? FUCK!?!?!?

I talk to the man some more and ask him “What is the name of the person it was transfered to?”. He tells me “I can’t give that to you, its a conflict of interest.” So I try a different tactic “Can you tell me exactly when the transfer supposedly happened?” He says Janurary 16th, 2005. “Wait a second, I got a license renewal notice for 2006! How come that one got mailed to me if the title was supposedly transfered to someone else?”

“Dont know” he says.

“If I come into the DMV office will they be able to tell me the name on the transfer?” I ask him.

“Yes”

“How come I never received any notification paperwork from the DMV at my permanent mailing address, which has never changed since I’ve had a license in CA?” Getting pretty fuming mad by this point wondering if this was some kind of aborted ID theft attempt or something.

“I don’t know sir, you’ll have to talk to someone at one of the field offices about that”

Gah….so now I know how much my registration will cost me (way too much thanks to 4 old parking tickets now totaling $572 dollars, thanks County of Los &*^&*^%# Angeles) and have to smog the BMW and go into the DMV office to find someone to talk to/yell at for this title nonsense. Le sigh.

About the Author

Daniel Spisak was born from the fiery depths of fusion and now roams the pale blue dot known as Earth. I obtained my bachelors degree in Computer Science from UC Irvine at the end of 2007.

I am also involved in technology & security consulting firms as well as being a freelance technology writer. I also contribute to Jerry Pournelle's website and Chaos Manor Reviews. Additionally I am also a freelance photographer as well and you can find my photos either on my own personal gallery or up at my Flickr account or on Zivity.

This blog is one of the main locations where I do my writing, which is then automatically sent to my LiveJournal, VOX, and MySpace accounts. I can also be found on a variety of social networking and microblogging sites like Pownce, Twitter, Brightkite, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

If your viewing this site with Internet Explorer it may not look correct because IE is horrible about following W3C web standards properly or consistently. I suggest you try browsing the Internet with Firefox. It is much better and not as vulnerable to security flaws as IE can be.

1 Response to “How can I help you?”

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1 Wabewalker Sep 27th, 2007 at 9:24 pm

There’s a smog test station behind the NAPA parts store across the street from the high school, buried in that commercial park. Last summer they were running pretty good deals. Might have been a grand-opening thing, but if your registration says “TEST STATION ONLY” I’d check them out.