Trying to register a car with a damaged title has been the worst ongoing DMV experience I’ve had for about two years now.
I bought a car and up until then, I left freshly-acquired titles on my kitchen counter as a reminder to go to the DMV ASAP to register the cars. Well, my little reminder bit me in the back one day as my wife had a cooking accident, drenching this particular car’s title in hot and dirty cooking oil. In a panic, I tried cleaning the oil off the title, which made things so much worse. But at the very least, the VIN was still easily readable, as was the rest of the text. The title was just a little brown in places.
I took it to the DMV anyway and the lady said nope, the title was damaged too much to be valid. Her solution was to get the guy I bought it from to get a dupe title. Sure, except for the fact that he wasn’t responding to messages anymore.
I tried another DMV. They told me that the state I bought the car from has a special watermark that activates when the title gets wet to flag for possible title fraud. Look, you can tell it just got wet and nothing else. But nope, that wasn’t going to fly.
I then tried a few more DMVs, hoping to find one person who could understand that this was just an honest accident. Still nope. In my state, you can also get title work done at check cashing places, which tend to look the other way when you have stuff the sticklers at the DMV do not like. Even they wouldn’t touch the title.
In the past, I would have told my state to buzz off and registered the car in Vermont, but now that loophole is closed. It seems my only real path forward is a service like Dirt Legal, which costs mega bucks, or get a bonded title, which also costs mega bucks. The car isn’t even worth that much. Freaking yay.
It’s like Schrödinger’s title, the car has a title but it also doesn’t!