Finally, the time came to get The Beast properly papered and tagged for Ohio. What a merry expedition! In our little corner of Ohio, even under the best of circumstances, you have to go to 3 separate places over 4 unique visits to get an out of state vehicle vetted, approved and licensed. In the past 2 days, I stopped at 5 different government offices, 7 separate times and got to pay for the privilege of having my life wasted by petty bureaucrats.
In the lovely state of Ohio, you have to get an out of state vehicle "inspected" at a license bureau ($3.50) before they'll issue a new title. Basically, they take down the VIN, make and model on a special form (only good for 30 days - since after 30 days your Taurus may have morphed into a Charger and you have to get it checked again, just to be sure). Then you have to go to a title office to get the title changed and pay any taxes due - not just on what you paid for the vehicle, but on any admin fees / stocking fees that the dealer may have charged. The rant about the double dipping created by taxing the sale of a used vehicle must wait for another day. Then, you have to go get an E-check (emissions). Finally, you take the title & passed e-check form back the the license bureau and get your plates and tags.
Now the fun begins:
There isn't a office that has both titling and licensing abilities in our county. Of the four title offices, the first two are closed on Mondays, open 8:30 - 4:30 T-F, 9-1 Sat. and the other two are open 8:15 - 4:30 M-F. The closest office is of the first variety & isn't even listed on the website. Also, their phone # doesn't have a message machine so I had to stop by on Monday to see what their hours were. Then, when I stopped back on Tuesday, I was told that their computers had been down for the past 4 days and hadn't been repaired yet!
There are 4 licensing offices, all of which have normal business hours - no qualms there. You just have to go there twice to get through the process (bring a book - maybe two) and it's not like they're right next to the title office, either.
E-check - some green initiative bullshit only required in a handful of Ohio's counties and only has 2 testing stations in our county. Guess who's awesomely huge truck is over the weight class limit for a free check and has to pay every 2 yrs for the privilege of the eco-nonsense? Or, I can get an appointment & drive to one of the 2 EPA field offices over an hour away (open M-F 8-5), have them say, "yep, it's a big diesel" and get a permanent exemption.
Not like it's shocking, but for all the information they have on their website, there's not a clearly defined set of requirements for going through the whole title -> license plate process. Instead, it's scattered amongst lists of links that make the whole process incoherent. A simple list would solve a lot of issues. Somehow, I think that'd be too simple. The other novel thought would have been to not raze the only dual title-license office in the county! Or, instead of opening a title-only location afterwards, put the title office into one of the existing license bureaus
Overall, I'm just glad it's done. If I was of stronger constitution, I would go and demand to know what in the hell "misc fees" ($10.00) refers to but at this point - I just don't care.
Happier posts on the way -- Blog shoot this weekend!
