Four years ago, I sold a broken motorcycle to a young fella looking for his first bike. Somehow, I made a huge mistake by not removing the license plate from the bike. I’ve started receiving a stack of traffic tickets for a vehicle I haven’t owned in years and went through a huge headache of fighting Chicago and Illinois about them. I won, but the guys who have been selling my motorcycle are about to have a really bad day.
Buying and selling vehicles private party is already a massive thorn in the backside. People like to waste your time, insult you, or even threaten you over the pile of junk you’re just trying to offload for $900. Yet, we still do it because it’s not like a dealership is going to give you a decent price for your rustbucket.
Four years ago, I accidentally committed the worst mistake you could make in a private party transaction. In many parts of the United States, you should remove the license plates from a vehicle you sell. If you don’t and the person who bought your vehicle is a jerk, your world will get turned upside down. They’ll rack up tickets, but the sucker will be you as that’s where the tickets will go. That’s what happened to me over a broken 1980 Honda Gold Wing GL1100.
This Poor Motorcycle
One of my first motorcycles was that 1980 Honda Gold Wing. I bought it in 2018 from a man serving in our armed forces. He needed the money to pay for vehicle repairs and I wanted something bigger than the 2005 Honda Rebel 250 I spent a month riding. The owner lovingly restored the motorcycle and gave it fantastic metallic blue paint and a marvelous comfortable saddle. He also tossed out the Honda’s four individual carburetors for a single Weber unit meant for an air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle. My Honda didn’t have a working tachometer, ran richer than Elon Musk, and had no turn signals, but it was a great ride.
It remained a great ride for over a year. Then, toward the end of summer 2019, the motorcycle delivered a double whammy. The hearty flat-four engine blew its right side head gasket. Then the starter clutch started dying. I studied the repair process over that winter and decided that repairing my $900 steed wasn’t worth it. Even if I fixed the gasket and starter clutch issue, I still had to fix a sticking brake, rewire the turn indicators, and figure out why the carb was way out of tune.
I don’t really do this car and motorcycle thing to make money, but because it’s something I love. If I’m selling something, it’s because I no longer want the vehicle. Thus, I give my vehicles a price that I think is fair. I’m not going to ask you to pay $3,000 for something I know isn’t worth that. I listed my Gold Wing for a touch over $1,000 and was immediately inundated with hundreds of messages.
As usual with Facebook Marketplace, the vast majority of messages were lowballers, people who didn’t read the listing, and people who claimed to have interest just to never respond to messages. I’m pretty good at cutting through the nonsense and found a message from a prospective buyer asking me about how quickly the motorcycle burned through coolant.
He seemed satisfied enough that the motorcycle had repairable issues, but still ran and rode. The buyer came by after the Memorial Day weekend, paid me $1,000, and off he went. According to the buyer, the motorcycle was going to be given to a friend as their first bike. A chunky, temperamental Honda tourer isn’t the ideal beginner bike in my eye, but it’s not my money.
Some number of days after the transaction ended I realized that I couldn’t find the plate to the Honda. Did I lose the plate? Did I leave it on the bike? The buyer didn’t respond to my messages and I had no other way of contacting them or finding them. If this hasn’t happened to you, the big risk here is that the buyer can break a bunch of traffic laws with the vehicle you sold them and you will be the person on the hook for it, not them.
Thankfully, Illinois has safeguards for stuff like this. At the bottom of every Illinois title is a white slip that you fill out and then send in, confirming that you sold your vehicle. It’s also wise to fill out a bill of sale, which I did at the time of the sale.
I was frustrated that there was almost certainly going to be tickets coming in the mail, but they never came. Days turned into months and months turned into years. I never received anything from the state or any city, so it seemed that the buyer did the right thing and didn’t ride the motorcycle with my license plate. Either that, or the state must have received the white slip, right?
The Nightmare
I’ve now owned 60 or so vehicles in my life and all of the ones I no longer have were sold on Facebook. I regularly search Facebook for my old vehicles to see what’s up with them. I’m always curious to see if the person I sold my vehicle to actually fixed it or somehow made it worse.
Back in April, I found my old Honda by accident. At first, I was excited to see that my old Honda was running. I then laughed at the fact that while the starter and head gasket issues were fixed, many more issues cropped up over the four years the bike was no longer in my care.
Then I was shocked. The photos showed the old Honda still wearing my old license plate. I finally had the answer to the question of what happened to my plate. The subsequent owners didn’t even make an effort to hide the fact that the plate expired in 2019, right around the time the head gasket blew. My heart sank.
I did some digging and found out that my poor motorcycle was subject to a lot of title jumping, or the act of selling a vehicle more than once without titling it first. Title jumping is illegal in Illinois. The state doesn’t want you to sell a vehicle to one person and for that person to sell it to another person without the state getting its tax money first.
I have been able to follow the chain of ownership of my Honda to a certain extent. I know the guy who bought it from me gave it to another guy. Neither of the guys were the guy who was selling it in April. Of course, he then sold it to someone else. That’s at least four people who were legally required to title the motorcycle in their name before selling it again. And none of these guys ever bothered to remove the license plate from the bike.
Weirdly, I still wasn’t getting tickets in the mail, so I took screenshots, built up an ownership trail, and kept monitoring the situation. Sure enough, I started getting tickets in May. It still blows my mind that things were great for four whole years until some jerk bought the bike and started causing trouble in Chicago with a motorcycle that was still titled in my name. First, the guy got a speeding warning, then he got two speeding tickets, a street cleaning parking ticket, and an expired plate ticket. Then he blasted down the Interstate, racking up unpaid toll violations.
The City of Chicago Department of Finance started sending me letters. At first I was frustrated, thinking that I must have triggered one of the city’s infamously shady red light cameras. Then I remembered that I haven’t driven one of my own vehicles into Chicago in about a year. Even weirder was the fact that the letters were addressed to my old name, which hadn’t been my legal name for five years.
By my last count, the guy with my old Honda racked up over $200 in tickets owed to Chicago and perhaps a couple of hundred more owed to the Illinois Tollway. Paying these tickets isn’t a real option as the jerk with your plates will almost certainly keep on racking up tickets. Technically, you’re on the hook for their bad behavior, so of course they’re going to continue making your life hell.
You also cannot just ignore these tickets. Chicago will happily boot any vehicle that’s in your name. They’ll boot any car registered in your name, not just the one that has tickets piling up. And the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority has the state-granted power to suck you dry.
Now, I don’t like getting into the business of others, so I don’t care if you’re breaking the law if you’re not hurting someone. But this crosses the line.
Beating The Tickets
Thankfully, both Chicago and the Illinois Tollway have processes for situations like this, but as I can now tell you, it’s not easy or fun. It was even worse for me because it’s been years since I sold this vehicle. I could not find the bill of sale and it seems to be clear that Illinois either didn’t receive my white slip or it didn’t process it. This is a known problem with the Illinois Secretary of State and you should never bet on the state properly processing the little white slip.
Alright, so the white slip was sent into the ether and I don’t have a bill of sale. How do I prove that I haven’t owned this motorcycle in years?
First, I initiated the dispute process with Chicago. My lawyer and wife Sheryl recommends doing the dispute in person to have a greater chance at success. It’s easier to argue your case to an Administrative Law Judge’s face rather than through the Internet. So, that’s what we did. Now, Chicago is vague about how this process works. The city will give you “hearing options” which consist of a week in which you can visit the city and get a hearing. Now, the wording of this is poor. It makes you think that you have to choose a day in that week for your hearing, but the website doesn’t give you an option to do that. In reality, you just show up to a hearing facility during that week block.
Since I didn’t have the bill of sale anymore, I built up my case on other documents. I archived the timestamped conversation I had with the buyer. Thankfully, the buyer indicated in his messages that he enjoyed the motorcycle after buying it. I also had screenshots of the vehicle’s latest for sale ad, which clearly shows my old license plate and someone who isn’t me selling it. The listing even showed someone who wasn’t me riding it. I also reported the license plate as missing to my local police department. I even had an insurance document showing that I removed the vehicle from my policy in early 2020.
I proudly walked into one Chicago’s hearing facilities and that alone gave me a migraine. You have to visit clerk before you’re approved to go into a hearing room. The clerk I got on my hearing day didn’t seem to know what she was doing. I gave her the license plate number and she somehow pulled up a Ford F-150 owned by someone named Gonzales. Well, it’s a Honda and I’m not Gonzales. She put the plate in again and somehow produced a dozen tickets for various vehicles, none of them owned by me. From my observation, the issue was that she was entering in the plate as a passenger vehicle plate. She even showed amazement that my license plate was so short. I kept on telling her to enter the plate number as a motorcycle plate, but she dismissed that, assuming that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Somehow, this continued for a whole 30 minutes or longer. Eventually, she figured out that I knew what I was talking about and I finally got a hearing room. Sadly, the proof I brought wasn’t enough. As I was told by a person representing the City of Chicago, if it is true that my title was jumped four times, both the city and the state will want to go after those four people.
Thus, simply reporting it to the local police wasn’t enough. The city wanted me to report it to the Secretary Of State Police. Further, the city also wanted me to go to a DMV facility to revoke the license plate. Apparently, the plate being four years expired isn’t enough.
Admittedly, I knew these were options, but I didn’t want to take them at first. As I said before, title jumping is illegal and both Chicago and the state seem to want heads to roll over this. I just want the tickets gone, I don’t necessarily want something bad to happen to these guys. But both the city and the state gave me no choice, so I revoked the plates and reported the situation to the Secretary Of State Police.
Bad News For An Old Honda
I then returned to Chicago this week, brought in receipts for everything, and the Administrative Law Judge dropped all of the tickets. In theory, my nightmare is over with Chicago. Next, I take the ruling I got from Chicago and give it to the state, hopefully releasing me from the toll violations.
However, this is not where the story will end. Revoking my old license plate and reporting it to the Secretary Of State Police puts a target on the motorcycle. The next time cops find the bike it’s not just getting a ticket, but impounded. The bike is worth about $900 and it’ll cost nearly that to get it out of the impound. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the bike in a police auction later on down the road.
Worse is likely coming for the guys involved. The state seems to be quite serious about investigating the title jumping and they have at least two names and locations from me to help facilitate it. I’ve been told that the consequences of title jumping range from fines to as hard as jail time depending on how bad things are. One thing’s for sure, if the state actually follows through with this, the subsequent owners of my old Honda are in for a bad time. Amazingly, it’s still titled in my name as of publishing.
What’s next for me? As I noted earlier, I take the decision from Chicago and give it to Illinois, hopefully absolving me of this nightmare. However, Sheryl is quick to point out that the governments of Chicago and Illinois are pretty incompetent, so I shouldn’t be surprised if another ticket comes in and I have to do this song and dance all over again.
One thing’s for sure. If you live in a place where plates do not follow the car, remove them before you sell the vehicle. If you screw everything else up in your sale, always remove the plate. If you don’t, you’ll be following my footsteps.
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
There’s a 2024 Suzuki Jimny For Sale In Oklahoma But It Should Probably Remain Forbidden Fruit
-
Massachusetts Is Banning Cars From Japan Without Telling Enthusiasts Why
-
Michigan Enthusiasts Become The Next To Fight The Battle Against Imported Car Bans
-
Why Rhode Island Is Harassing The 30 Last Owners Of Legally Imported Cars In Its State
-
Here’s The Letter From The Texas DMV That Lets People Drive Imported Trucks Again
Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage.
Those old Goldwings are awesome,.right Mercedes? My dad had a ’79 then an ’81 and I had an ’84.
This is why I ask the seller to drive it to my house and pull the plates, then give them a ride back, or I just show up with a trailer.
One exception was my Benz, cause I bought it from a family that I’ve known for 20 years, so I just drove home in the car and mailed the plates.
I keep him updated on all the fixes and upgrades I’ve done, he’s happy to see the 38 year old beast living it’s best life.
At least in my state the buyer can drive home without plates. You have a grace period of something like 30 days to get new ones, and it’s legal to drive during that time. Just keep the signed title and any bill of sale in the glove box in case you get pulled over.
Yep. In Virginia you can get a trip permit for $5 good for 3 days from purchase date. That and the bill of sale will allow driving the vehicle from purchase location to destination.
I usually print out a piece of paper which reads “IN TRANSIT”, a date, and the VIN and so far I have never had a problem. It’s not officially legal in NY, but it’s worked about a dozen times so far.
Getting a temp plate in NY is more work than just registering the damn thing, but in some states a temp is super easy.
You don’t want anything bad to happen to these guys? You’re a much better person than I am. I’m thinking faces dragged against pavement. Exhale.
And it was all over a beater Goldwing worth almost nothing. What a bunch of losers.
Truer words have never been spoken
I’d say Mercedes could’ve removed “of Chicago and Illinois” and the sentence would still be accurate. 🙂
Let’s not forget it was the seller of the motorcycle/writer of this story who’s incompetence created the problem in the first place.
Stories are fun to read. but this should conclude with a simple checklist of how to buy/sell from an independent party.
I bought a title jumped vehicle once. The original seller and the intermediate buyer(s) knew how to work around it. The buyers never filled out their portions of the paperwork (title and bill of sale), which left me as the apparent buyer directly from the titled owner. I didn’t have any issues getting the title or registration in my name. I think this is common in areas where a buyer may not be in the country legally.
I overheard someone trying to get a vehicle with a long history or title jumping registered. He had all the bills of sales and full history of ownership. The poor woman at the DMV just told home to contact the titled owner and have him sign a new bill of sale and title. The vehicle was so low of value that the state wouldn’t collect taxes on the transfers
They definitely do not care about this in CA, at least for lower value vehicles. I’ve probably owned a dozen cars and bike that were never attached to me legally, ever. Also, have bought several that were not sold by the name listed on the title.
Too bad most of these folks are probably not cash rich.
But I would be inclined to have your wife sue each and every one of them, just to teach a lesson.
We have had the same experience here, where folks make their “own” plates out of cardboard, etc.
We sold a sweet Malibu to a guy once for half of what we were asking. Because he gave my boss, (wife) the sob story of being a poor. (like we are) She once gave the god damned Loch Ness monster about tree fiddy. Now he won’t go away…
About a year or so later the cops came by to visit us. First question, Do you know the dead guy in the front seat of your car? WTF?
They found him (buyer) in the front seat missing half of his head. In the back of the Target Store lot. Eventually learned that it was a crack deal gone bad. Shit…and some crack head is doing life now for this crap.
BTW, the cops said we could take back the car, since no paperwork had ever been filed for new ownership.
We declined that offer. And started pulling tags off each car we sold thereafter.
Sometimes people just either don’t have their shit together, or just suck…
well that escalated quickly
Sorry. Been thinking though. It seems we have donated everything since then, 1990?, rather than deal with bad stuff going on.
“We declined that offer” You put it so politely 🙂
Holy crap i wouldnt go anywhere near that car again.Imagine the people who could recognize it!
Right. We lived in a very small town forever, and because of our jobs, we were known by 75% of the locals. Not to be too graphic, but it was such a mess that we even had trouble getting a wrecking yard to accept it.
Mechanically it was great. Body, 2dr, was perfect. A great dependable ride, and a very popular body style. But the inside was truly something from a horror movie after the murder was done…
A shotgun at close range can do incredible damage, and it did that for sure. People are truly animals sometimes, just beyond belief.
My wife’s brother was a cop, and there was a guy on the force who bought vehicles deaths had occurred in, cleaned em up and resold for a decent profit for extra cash. Even he said “no way.” So we never saw the car after the killing, but wife’s brother took a bill of sale and title from us and had it towed to the wrecking yard. Thank God.
And we were actually happy to hear that, because we were concerned about it being resold to some unsuspecting person.
The car and story was on the news off and on for a couple of years while the cops hunted down the killer, and then 2 years later for the trial…
Have a great weekend!
The best course of action for a car like that is fire and lots of it.
I feel like “there was a grisly murder with a shotgun” should be a “direct to crusher” scenario. I know, I don’t like crushing cars either, but you’re not getting all of… that out. It’s in there forever. And that’s not even mentioning the ghost potential.
Illinois and Chicago don’t care about victims of crimes or punishing criminals, unfortunately, so not very good odds that these title jumpers will pay a price. The criminals do these things because they know their risk of getting caught or paying a price is extremely low. Too bad for the honest citizens who suffer.
I’ve always gotten the plate when I purchased a vehicle because I just thought that’s how things worked. When I bought my Mustang from a guy in Nebraska, I even arranged to mail the plates back to him, because apparently the state needs them? I didn’t want to get pulled over for not having plates, so that worked out just fine. I didn’t know this could spiral like this, but I never needed to know cos I’m a goody two-shoes who goes into the DMV immediately so I can get the DMV taxes and associated crying out of the way as soon as possible.
Can’t you bring a plate from another vehicle with you to buy? That’s how it’s done in MA and they give you 7 or 10 days to get it registered. If you get pulled over in the interim, you hand the officer the bill of sale of the “new” car and I think the vehicle the plate technically belongs to, but that registration has to be valid (registration and plate are tied together).
I’m in Florida, and I believe it’s a felony to knowingly put an unregistered tag on a car.
In the case of MA, the tag isn’t unregistered, it’s just presently connected to a different vehicle, but I believe the logic is that this is acceptable because the tag belongs more to the person on the registration than the car. I remember being told that you need the present car’s information, too, to show that you are transporting a new(er) vehicle just bought, but have a currently registered (and insured) one. You’d also want to have it insured at the time of purchase, but I don’t think you would get nailed for it if you got pulled over as the new(er) car wouldn’t be registered yet, and one can’t get registered without insurance, so MA police go by an insurance stamp on the registration card rather than a separate insurance card or whatever it is the other states use and they wouldn’t likely look further into it unless you pissed them off or something (of course, if you get into a crash, I guess you’re screwed, though I’m not quite sure as insurance more follows the individual so it can cover occasional drives of other cars, too, but it seems it’s not quite that cut-and-dry. I always notified my insurance and never had an issue, though I also never had a crash in such circumstances. I knew a guy in HS who had a shitbox he would just forge a new bill of sale for with different dates every week or so to cover himself. Did that for months at least). This is usually used by someone who would be buying a used car to replace another where the tag would be subsequently transferred to the new vehicle, though that isn’t a requirement as one could get a new tag for the new vehicle, if desired. The 7-10 day allowance (I forget which) is to give someone time to get it registered and inspected.
That’s in-state, of course, so I don’t know about over state lines and it’s possible this has changed as it’s been a while since I didn’t have a dealership deal with all this crap for me before driving the new car home.
I’ve driven a car home from a purchase with tags from another on it. The hope being if I get pulled over I can show I just bought it (title and bill of sale) and try to ask forgiveness. That seemed easier than driving 2 hours on the highway without a tag, which seemed like it would raise a flag if spotted. But yah I agree…showing a fake tag is probably more illegal.
States are not coherent about this. It’s possible that the only fully legal way to get the car you bought in a state you don’t live in is on a trailer. I’m in California, you just file the release of liability on line, plate goes with the vehicle. My 1973 GMC Motorhome has original plates on it.
You can do this in Pennsylvania and you are, as I understand it, supposed to return old plates to the PA DMV when you get a personalized plate. I have a custom plate on my MINI and the one that I was issued when I bought and registered the car is hanging on the wall in my rec room. I also have some of my dad’s old plates, though in the last few decades he’s always just transferred the plate to any new car he’s bought. I’ve never heard from the state about returning old plates. I’ve also read that one can “destroy” them if they aren’t returned, so there seems to be a little contradictory information out there.
They used to want them returned in MA, but now they tell us to destroy them at home and discard them.
I don’t have much sympathy for them. I don’t think they deserve jail time (which I doubt they’d get unless they’ve been operating some kind of racket for years), but they knew they were riding on plates that weren’t theirs and title jumping. I don’t trust people, so I don’t take as many chances and would have reported the plate lost or stolen right away, plus with the horrible inefficiency and sometimes arbitrary nature of the DMV, that’s asking for worse trouble to disentangle later on (I recently had a month-long battle to register a small utility trailer where I got a combination of clueless people on the phone and a couple of jerks at one RMV location having me jump through hoops before trying a different RMV and them wondering why I had notarized paperwork the other jerks demanded I get before handing me a plate). I get the buyer might have gotten in trouble for still using the plate and you didn’t want that, but they should have known they shouldn’t have been using it and now they’re going to get hit harder.
I’m more surprised that several title jumpers didn’t cause a problem, though that might be because the bike just wasn’t being ridden at all.
Good. Fuck those guys
Texas may not have a State income tax but they have a hundred other ways to extract your money from you. Please don’t be fooled! Texas Will Mess With You.
Get Well Soon John Force.
I saw that John is out of the intensive care unit as of Friday.
I said basically this same thing when commenting on basically this same article a few weeks back, but same thing happened to me after totaling my wife’s car while living in Chicago and having it towed away. Someone snagged the plate from the impound lot and, well, that’s another article for another day.
My dad sold a van back in the 90s that was used by buyers in a drive by shooting that night. I guess these gangsters were too stupid to steal the thing so paid $750 for their getaway vehicle. My father is a grey haired professor, was an interesting conversation with police in our living room that night. Albuquerque, amirite?
Chemistry professor?
Did he explain to the police that he is the one who knocks?
Unfortunately, I don’t think this situation will fully resolve for a while. “Poor customer service” among the government, utilities, insurance companies, etc. is about as meaningful as the Polish border to the 19th and 20th century Europe.
When I lived in an apartment building, the gas company put someone else’s meter in my name and started sending me bills. Despite the many phone calls and faxes (yes, faxes), they kept sending me bills and then finally sent me to collections. It wasn’t until I got in contact with the utility board that the issue finally went away. 10+ years later, I still have all the documentation, just in case some file somewhere didn’t get updated.
I had a similar issue with AT&T Broadband where they tried to get me to pay for a cable box someone else in the apartment house didn’t return when they moved out. Even with them having a different SS# for their account and apartment number, it still took months to resolve as collection agency refused to take AT&T BB’s word that it was resolved in my favor without a fax AT&T said they’d send, but never did (but claimed to do so) and I wouldn’t find out for another few weeks when I started getting more collection notices or calls. Finally threatened to call AT&T every 20 minutes and ask for that particular operator until I got confirmation they sent the fax and they finally did. People who want government to be run like big business don’t seem to realize what big businesses are run like and that the problem is, in a sense, it is run like a big business, packed with too many people who DGAF overseen by too many layers of lazy managers promoted not on competence, but due to connections, internal politics, or even apparently because they were too incompetent to do well in the lower position, so there is a massive lack of accountability. Oh, and I work in telecom.
T-Mobile spent 5 years chasing me (after I moved to a different country) over an unpaid cellphone bill of $450. A bill for a contract that I had cancelled 6 months earlier because I was moving out of the country (and for a new blackberry that was never delivered because of said cancellation – this was some years ago).
I got emails, letters and phone calls almost weekly and repeatedly explained why I would not be paying the outstanding charges, along with providing evidence of my contract cancelation (literally a letter from T-Mobile telling me my account was closed with a zero balance). Despite my best efforts to clear up the confusion, I ended up with a binder full of paperwork for that cancelled contract, most of it the ‘case reference numbers’ they provided for almost every phone conversation I had to have with them over those 5 years.
The court summons was the last straw, and I realized I either had to show up and fight my case in front of a judge (at the expense of an international flight, hotel, my time, etc.) or get a lawyer involved. Thankfully a strongly worded letter from my attorney did the trick, and they immediately dropped the case and admitted “an administrative error by our sub-contracted debt collection agent.” Since I now had a lawyer, our response was an invitation to cover my legal expenses (about $800 at this point), their response to which would help me decide whether or not to file suit for harrassment. Within a week my attorney received a check in the mail.
Fast-forward many years and my current cellphone company has since been bought by… T-Mobile. I will be switching carriers and keeping the lawyer’s phone number handy, just in case.
Ironic. We were with TMobile since 1998. Really happy.
But when wife passed suddenly, and money got tight for me.
And they were unwilling to give me a decent rate for a single line.
So I switched to Consumer Cellular. 32.50 a month. Real decent service and customer service too.
Dealing with this whole tech services thing is a real pita and it seems worse each time, and worse every year too.
Glad you had some satisfaction, but I know it was a huge pain in the ass for you. Sorry.
You too? AT&T can eat shit and die after the crap we went through with them. We bought a newly built house in 2005, in a rural area. At the time AT&T was the only available internet offered in our area.
We were having tech issues for over a year, (long story) but their fault.
They sent a great guy out a dozen times, each time with new in the box equipment.
We actually got to be friends with the guy. Very competent and went way beyond the norm to try and help us out. But AT&T have the lines buried under the street. And thus lies the issue. AT&T was not willing to dig up and pay for street repair. Apparently when we got a good rain, (almost daily in the summer) water would leak into the buried stuff and cause issues.
Here’s where it went bad though. The tech guy. turned in the paperwork for each time he came out to the house. But never bothered to turn in the routers, etc that he received each time he came out. We started to get bills for like 9 routers they said we had about 2 years into this shit show. Tried to solve this to no avail.
Wife remembers the guy’s home phone #, calls him. He has quit AT&T months ago for a better job. Left a ton of stuff in his truck when he quit. Like 100 or more routers, which were all used, or broken. His replacement was later busted for selling the routers to friends in the hood for cheap interweb access.
We went through hell with those bastards for many months. But we also switched to a different provider as soon as the shit started. Screw AT&T. Never gonna give those bastards another dime. YMMV. /s
Comcast ate AT&T BB a long time ago, but I won’t use AT&T to this day even though BB was a separate division.
At some point, I’m going to run out of companies I allow myself to do business with. (And people joke about me consuming so little and preferring to make my own shit than buy it. Of course there are other reasons I’m like this beyond just hating too many corporations, but that’s part of it.)
Same here. TMobile web access now but it sucks also!
My experiences with AT&T are similar. There is no head office. There is no place to deliver a subpoena or serve legal papers. Their “legal department” is an answering machine, and messages left are never responded to.
They promised me a reward card for upgrading to fiber from DSL. It never came, and several calls to customer service always had the same answer: there is no record of a reward card for your account. Then last week I got an email to claim my reward card, which is apparently now in the mail.
They also somehow opened two work orders to switch my DSL to fiber. The number of emails, phone calls and letters urging me to schedule an appointment to make the switch after it had already been done was astonishing.
My headaches are minor compared to yours, but the frustration and time wasted was still significant.
The only other decent internet service in the area is even worse.
Best of luck dealing with the state, I went through a mess a few years ago with IL
I had a 1983 Dodge Rampage registered, they provided a random plate and registration that ended in a “G”. I had that on the truck and drove around for a few years, renewed it every etc, with no issues.
One day I get a parking violation in the mail from Oak Brook for an F-150 with my plate #. No photos, just the plate #. I called and explained that my truck was certainly not an F-150 and got Oak Brook to drop the fine, but they explained that the system had this F-150 registered to me with a plate that ends in a “6”
After numerous calls to the state and a visit to the DMV I was finally able to get it resolved, the “G” plate which I was provided was somehow not showing as associated with any vehicle despite the fact they sent annual renewals for it that had the correct vehicle info. Someone in Springfield (Patty or Selma?) typed a 6 instead of G. Fortunately the F-150 owner only ever had that one parking violation.
On the subject of title skipping, I fear that with our title transfer fees having gone up over $100 recently to $156 is only going to make the issue worse, especially for those of us buying and selling undesirable cars and near scrap prices.
I very much appreciate seeing passing mention of a Rampage.
Hot Rod did very great and ridiculous things with theirs in ’84 or so. I’d still love to have one, but have seen about four overall in my life.
We need a hatchback-based Rampage equivalent again. Those were very cool, and I was too young at the time. Sigh…
Related but not related, always cancel all utilities yourself after selling property, I’m on the hook for $400+ in heating oil for the house I sold in early 2023 because the new owner didn’t switch the account to his name last winter. Expensive mistakes suck, as do people
Are toll roads managed by the Illinois government? Most if not all in Texas are privately managed with little to no enforcement until they hit an exorbitant bill. Toll roads, at least in Texas, are a con to squeeze money from drivers to line corporate pockets with minimal upkeep to the road and benefit to the driver.
Illinois toll roads are managed by the state toll highway authority, part of our corrupt government.
I have had a Texas EZ Pass since day one and it has worked flawlessly for many years. If you do not have a pass it reads your license plate and sends a bill in the mail to the registered owner of the car. Sounds to me like you loaned your car to your girl friend who used the rush-hour, express toll land twice a day to commute to work…$15-$30 per day in tolls.
I’ve had an ez pass and had the tolls mailed to me. I’ve never loaned my car up or gotten crazy bills, but I do know plenty of people that just don’t pay them. Tx toll roads are just pointless money grabbing trash that are tied to some really corrupt government and business interactions. (Imminent domain, crooked contracts, bribery, etc.)
I’ve literally never gotten from Jarrell to San Antonio any faster by taking the toll road than I have by staying on i35 and the last time I took the toll road, there was some pretty severe damage in areas.
What a ride!
I hope they at least catch the person racking up tickets on it. That’s such asshole behavior!!
Best wishes for a 100% successful resolution with *both* the city and the state!! The fact that the umpteenth (ha) owner suddenly started racking up all those tickets (including running red lights, shadiness of those red light cameras notwithstanding) would seem to suggest deliberate intent borne of that person believing they have immunity/impunity because they know the license plate is not in their name. It also stands to reason that it’s not the only time this person has done such a thing; hopefully the process you started will result in that person being caught so that they don’t do that to anyone else and that whoever else was affected will get proper restitution. So you’re striking a blow not just for yourself but also for other people potentially impacted by this particular person.
Don’t feel bad about what’s going to happen to the title jumpers, Mercedes. They’ve earned whatever wrath the state decides to dish out. Small scale fraud is still fraud, and the current owner is being an asshole because they know someone else is getting the tickets.
Wouldn’t surprise me if title jumpers sold the bike at a premium because of the plate. The bike is $500, the plate that allows for “discretion” when committing felonies….errr….commuting is an extra $1500.
Glad you got some relief from Chicago and hope things work out similar with the toll authority. I wouldn’t count on either government to follow through on anything. They almost never do.
Buyers, amiright? I’ve got a set of wheels to sell, I’ve got a thousand photos showing their every molecule, and I’m thinking about charging people a refundable $10 over Venmo just to come see them. The people who have enough free time available to waste yours are precisely the people I don’t want to talk to.
I’ve seen that in an ad before. Immediately skipped that seller, I don’t care how good of a deal it is. And I’m a buyer that I show up, and unless there is something seriously wrong with the description I’m going to buy it.
I think you’re not the majority of internet buyers, which is a credit to you.
One time I was buying a set of wheels for my BMW 740, and found a good deal on CL. I e-mailed the guy and he seemed ok, except he wouldn’t give me the address, and it was about a 2 hour drive to where he was. After some thought, I begrudgingly decided to go. He said to text him when I got about 30 minutes away. So as I crossed the NC/VA state line, I texted him, and he sent me the address as promised. I looked up a pic of the address and surrounding area on Maps, and it seemed to be a respectable neighborhood.
I get there and call him, and text him and wait about 10 minutes or so, don’t hear from him. As a last resort before leaving, I walk to the back of the house – where I immediately run into a 350 lb guy who is all muscle. My heart sank a little bit right then (and I’m 6’3″, 220, so not a little guy.) After the initial shock, he asked what I was doing there, and I replied, ‘I’m here to pick up some BMW wheels, am I at the right house?’ From that point on everything was great. He was one of the nicest guys I’ve met buying stuff online. He was wearing a Miami Dolphins cap, and I’m a Dolphins fan who had went to a game in DC the previous weekend, so we talked about that, I learned he was in the Coast Guard in Miami, and my grandfather was in the CG in WW2, and later lived in Miami (why I’m a Dolphins fan.) We completed the transaction, he threw the tires in my truck and I left.
About 30 minutes later I get a text from him thanking me for following through on the purchase, he had been dealing with knuckleheads for awhile, and in conclusion told me I had restored his faith in humanity in general.
I think I’m thinking, though, that a person like yourself who passes on my ad and moves along takes *none* of my time.
I flew from DC to Tampa to buy a car and drive home. I was (only a little) indignant that the seller wouldn’t let me borrow his plates, but that all makes a lot more sense now.
Amen brother!
I’m from California so the plates just go to the next owner. I always wondered why I’d see tons and tons of license plates on shows like American Pickers.
The fact that every state has their own rules is ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous. Not sure how we count as a single country when there are literally things you can legally do in one state that will put you in jail in another.
It’s almost like people with widely different opinions, even to the point they enact contradictory laws, can work together from time to time for a larger common good neither could achieve individually.
Well, not on the internet of course, but it works in real life for things like national defense.
All that would be well and good, except for some of those states that heavily rely on taxpayers in other states to mooch on for a living, and tout their low taxes and “independence from the feds”.
I live in Illinois (mentioned in this^^ story), where we pay almost $6 in federal taxes for every $1 we receive in federal funding.
I also live in IL. Deciding whether our State or Federal government would make better choices with that money is like picking between a methhead and a gambling addict.
I think that’s a false dychotomy (state vs fed). Both of them can either tax the people (who need help) and give that money to corporate (who don’t need help) through tax breaks or subsidies, or the other way around (by using tax money for programs benefitting the people).
By looking at people wellfare vs corporate wellfare you can tell who that particular govt is really working for, and then make an informed decision whether to support it or not.
Well, truth be told, I’m glad for this, as there are many laws in many states I don’t agree with and am happy to avoid.
I think it was generally not a big deal in the old days in any states or plates were automatically canceled when registration was or something as junk yard cars used to often have plates still on them and restaurants would sometimes have plate collections from all over hanging on the walls. At some point after, in MA, you used to have to turn the plates in for destruction to cancel a registration (or maybe report them lost or stolen), but now they let you destroy them at home. Either way, plates are tied to the registration, not the car. Other places are the opposite. I think the former makes more sense as it essentially ties the plate to the individual and can be transferred to other cars as licensing and registration are more about the person than the machine, though I don’t care all that much either way.
I was hoping for a full write-up on this! Glad you’re on your way to exoneration.
And I, for one, would watch a Netflix limited series featuring you and Sheryl solving DMV-related crimes together.
Law and Order: DMV *bong bong*
Surely someone here has enough FO time at work to write an actual script for the pilot.
DT examines, then tastes, a flake of rust: “84 Comanche! We’re on the right track!”
California must be making DT rusty- there was no comanche in 84
I knew as I typed that someone would call me out on that but was too lazy to check.
Thumbs up
Not gonna watch unless they hire some hot babes if it ever gets into production.
As long as they don’t go down the “CSI” path (yeah, quote marks are absolutely warranted in the case of the CSI franchise, ha):
https://youtu.be/3uoM5kfZIQ0?si=2qvQMyaAy-JYFyT1
JT looks at an image of a car. “Looks pixelated. Enhance! Enhance! “
“Wait! It’s just a Yugo. They all look like a crude square.”
If you ever watched a show called Parking Wars, it was kinda that. Seeing people struggle through the lines and coming up with required documentation to get their car out of impound was depressing.
There was one episode where a guy was in, I think, Philadelphia for an event and got his car towed for a parking violation. He had to go back home to North Carolina immediately after the event to work, and he wasn’t able to get back for about a month. He got back to Philly with all the required documents (insurance, etc), but in the intervening time, his plates had expired. Philly wouldn’t let him drive the car off without valid plates, and NC, for some reason, wouldn’t renew them unless it was physically present at their DMV. The only way Philly would release it was on the back of a tow truck.
He ended up having it towed off the Philly DMV lot for a couple of miles, then he got it dropped and drove it home.
Yeah, that show was hilarious…I watched it years ago and just watched it again
Season 1 / Episode 01 – “It’s a Honda and I’m not Gonzales.”