I received a surprise letter in the mail this week from my friendly, not-so-neighborhood California Department of Motor Vehicles, specifically the collections arm of that renowned institution. Since I didn’t do them the justice of notifying them I had moved to Connecticut, their system assumed I was illegally driving my car around California with expired registration for the last seven or eight months.
Now, let’s not worry too much about the double jeopardy implied by the fact that if I were doing that, I certainly would have received a ticket or two at this point to go with the fees I already allegedly owe.
Here’s the kicker: the letter they sent was not via USPS forwarding. They sent it directly to my Connecticut address, so there is some record, somewhere, that I live there now.
Luckily, this has been resolved relatively quickly. There was a phone number I could call to dispute the charges, and I quickly got on the line with a nice person who told me what to expect. They were going to send me an email where I needed to detail when I left California, when I arrived in Connecticut, when I first registered my car here, and a copy of the registration document.
That email never showed up, but they gave me the email address from which I should expect it. I emailed them directly and received a notice that the DMV’s records were updated—the only remaining step is to call again so they can forward me to the Collections folks and settle the record. Why I have to do that is beyond me, but hey, I’m just trying to follow the rules.
I’m frustrated by the “guilty until proven innocent” tinge to this situation. Thousands of people must be similarly caught unaware by their policy, and it falls into the vast bucket of laws and regulations, which makes it extremely easy to accidentally violate because you have to think to ask the right question to discover said regulation.