Penetrating the Bureaucracy

Of course the one day I had off last week had to be consumed by time-wasting annoying meaninglessness. My car tags run out at the end of this month, but Tennessee cannot renew them because they never got a title in Tennessee's name. This is the process I had to go through to get it done. It took about 3.5 hours.

I open my mail and I have a letter from Tennessee telling me I can't renew my tags because of the title situation. This was supposed to be taken care of last year when I moved here. I called the 1-800 number and it was busy so I figure it would be easier to drive to the county clerk and get it taken care of, so I do.

I get to the office and she tells me what the letter really means: TN never got my title. I need to call my lienholder and get that taken care of, and when they send the title I can get my tags renewed. Tennessee sent me this letter because the lienholder never responded to the same letter they were supposed to recieve.

I called the lienholder, they never recieved such a letter. I told them that it was sent. They have no record of it; TN must have never sent it. I ask what I can do, and after some pointless chatter I mention that I am getting the "run-around." Very quickly after this statement she tells me to call Tennessee and have them fax the letter and gives me the fax number.

I called the department of safety in Nashville. I'm on hold for 45 minutes, and the hold music is irritatingly bad, and every minute they interrupt to tell me they are busy. One minute it is a man's voice and the next minute it is a lady's voice. There is a 1 second pause between the music and the sickenly nice reminder that all the lines are currently busy and they will take my call as soon as possible in the order it was recieved. I kept thinking they had picked up the call. Finally I talk to a representative and she says the lienholder must have lost it and I need to talk to them. I mention that I had talked to them and that they never recieved it. She tells me it was sent and they must have lost it. She tells me a couple other pointless things. I mention I am getting the "run-around" and that I need to get my tags renewed because neither my lienholder or the state of TN will pay my ticket if they expire. She tells me to not get frustrated and asks what I would like her to do for me. I tell her to fax them the letter. She says she can do that, but it will take a few weeks because they will have to get the title sent to their department and it will take a couple weeks for processing and my tags run out in a week. If I fax the letter, they can overnight the title to me and I can take it to the clerk's office and renew my tags.

At this point it is time to leave for the Wednesday after school program I help out with at church. I go taking all the needed information with me so I can take care of it.

From the church I call the lienholder and explain what I am going to do and see what information I need with the fax. It is at this point that they tell me they only have an electronic title and it will take 4-6 weeks to get the title from the state of California, then they will have to send it to Tennessee. And they reemphasize that they never recieved the letter in the first place. I mention that my tags expire in a week. They tell me to call TN and get an extension.

This time I am smart and call the county clerk's office. I explain the situation and she tells me what to do in about 2 minutes. Tennessee will not allow extensions, so I need to fax the letter from TN to the lienholder and get the proof of when it was faxed. Have my lienholder write a letter saying it is in process and how long it will take. With that proof she will be able to go ahead and issue a new registration. Ahhhh, thank you.

The next day I call my lienholder and tell them what to do. Within 2 hours I had the letter in hand that had all the needed information.

The nice part about smaller towns and counties is that it is much easier to find the people who know what is going on, and they are much nicer about helping you. The next day I got my new tags. However, if my tags get run, it will show them to be expired because TN will not show I am registered until they recieve the title, so considering the lienholder has to deal with the CA government, I should be officially registered by September. California bureaucracy is much more maddening. I may have to do the same thing next year...

And based on the quick response by my lienholder once they had the information, I am guessing it was TN's fault. Businesses can be bureaucratic, but even Dilbert couldn't hang with government bureaucracy.

(written to Don Henley's greatest hits--Here is some of my Dirty Laundrey, I got through it by not going quietly, what a worthless evening)