If you were to google "people who love the DMV", this might be the only entry you would find, but I think I can say today that I do. Since the new car, I have been noticing how really awful my license plates have gotten. They are from 1995, my first new car on my own (Escort wagon). The front one was slightly crinkled in an accident in the PT Cruiser when it was about six months old. A kid ran a stop sign and though I tried to miss him, I hit his back bumper. No damage to him (of course) but my car needed a new bumper. The plate is scuffed and faded, but readable.
The back plate numbers have become puffy with rust under the paint, and, though I have tried to remove them, there are several years' stickers under the current one. My sticker expires in December, and quite often it is beyond cold when I have to apply the new one. (Even though the PT was bought in June and the Outlander in August, I am stuck with my December sticker because I have transferred the plates from car to car.) I have had problems several years trying to get the new sticker to stick, since I have no warm place to put it on. One year it even fell off after I applied it in the bank parking lot, becoming unusable in the process, and I had to go straight back in to the bank for a different one (which I then took home and put on in my garage - sheltered, but still not warm). And I can't tell you the number of times there has been panic when I remembered on Dec. 31 or Jan. 1 or 2, that I forgot to get a sticker. Another $100 expense is not something I generally need at Christmas time, either, especially one I forgot about. Never buy a car in December!
So, I needed new plates.Who wants to go to the DMV for me? Anyone??
I decided to look online to see if they could be ordered that way, and of course, the form that I needed was not available online. <sigh> So, it was off to the DMV on the day after a three-day weekend, when I figured they would probably be busier than all get-out. Imagine my surprise when there were parking spots right in front of the door - regular ones, not the ones marked for people taking driving tests! When I walked in, instead of standing in line to take a number to stand in another line, I walked right up to the counter! My number was 22, which is my favorite number - and they were currently serving number 20! And the best parts were yet to come.
I had seen online that a replacement set of plates was $9, with a replacement sticker at $20. The new plates will automatically come with a new sticker; there was no avoiding that. I had thought maybe I could just hold the new plates until renewal time, but no. Oh well. I asked if there was any way to change the expiration of the sticker, and she gave me wonderful news. When I come in to get a new December sticker, I can instead apply for an extension of up to four months! It costs $8/month, but it gets me to an April expiration date - way better, both weather- and money-wise. For a mere $32 I will never again have to stand in the subzero wind chill, trying to scrape off old, frozen stickers and get the new sticker to stick and stay stuck. Score #1!
The new plates can take up to 90 days to arrive because I want to keep my same number. I wonder what they do for the expired sticker to get you from December to April to avoid being stopped? Anyway, I stood there, waiting for her to tell me how much it was going to be, and she told me that because they were "defective" plates, not lost or stolen, there was no charge! Score #2!
Total time from walking in to walking out with the knowledge that I have spanky-new plates and an anticipated April expiration date on the way, 15 minutes. 15 minutes!! It took longer than that to drive over there. Hmm, what will I do with the rest of my morning now? :)
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