This is going to be a bit of a long winded rant. Sorry about this, but if I don't get this off my chest, I'm going to start ripping throats out.
***Engage RANT mode***
To start at the beginning of this. About a month, or so, before Christmas, I ordered new vanity plates for my car and my wife's car. Did everything online through NJMVC's website, the way they wanted it done. I did everything the way it was supposed to be done. First I ordered my plates and then about 3 days later I ordered my wife's plates.
I received my plates about 2 days after Christmas. No problems, mounted on the car right away, good to go.
My wife's plates did not arrive until Jan. 4th 2008. About the 8 weeks they said it might take to get them. This is where the major SNAFU started.
My wife commutes to NYC for work, about 2 times a week. She takes the train in. She has been doing this for about 3 years. Mostly from the same 2 train stations. Now, since 9/11, they have a local police officer that sits at the station for most the day and all he does is run plates on the vehicles parked at the station. It's usually the same guy, so I'm sure he's run our plates a bunch of times. Well, 1/4/08 turned out to be a nightmare for us.
My wife gets off the train at 11:30 pm that night and discovers that her car is GONE. This is a Friday night, luckily for me. Usually I'm sound asleep by then, so I was awake and still dressed when she called me and she was understandably very upset. I ask if she is at the right station and she says yes, then I see her new plates, that I had just gotten out of the mailbox when I got home from work that night and say, "Call the police, I bet they towed your car". Yep, nailed it on the first guess.
The brain trust at NJMVC had changed her registration over to the new plates on 12/31/07, now remember, I just pulled them out of the mail at 5pm on 1/4/08 and they were post marked 1/2/08. Yep, 2 whole days AFTER they changed the registration over and we didn't get the plates for another 2 days after that. So when the officer from the town the station was in ran her plates that day, it came up as "Fictitious plates". Then he must have inputted our VIN wrong because it came up non-existent. Now I bought that car brand spankin' new in 2002 and have registered it every year since then, so that was another major screw up.
So, I go pick up my wife and the very next morning, at the crack of dawn, we went to the local NJMVC office. Lucky they have Saturday hours. We get in there and find out what happened. The woman at the office, who was extremely patient and helpful with us, traced what happened and printed everything out for us. She and the local police officer that was at the office both said our car should never have been impounded. The plate history was on their system as was our so-called non-existent VIN .
Then we had to drive an hour to the Secaucus train station, to find a NJ Transit cop, to sign a release, so that we could drive another half an hour to Paterson to get our car out of impound. It cost us almost $260.00 to get to our car. We get to the car and the plates are GONE. I go back to the office and ask where our plates are and I'm told to call the police. We call the town police and they tell us to call the Transit police as they were the ones that impounded our car. Turns out they confiscated the plates and they were sitting in an evidence locker. (insert ill boding foreshadowing music here). Lucky for us, we had the new plates with us, because we brought the unopened envelope, with the post mark to the MVC office. New plates on the car, out of impound and all is now right with the world, other than trying to get our old plates back from the Transit cops, so we can turn them into MVC.
Now, I look forward to my down time on Saturday mornings, but this Saturday turned out to be more of a work day, with all the driving around and stress. We left our house at 6am and didn't get home till about 2pm.
That Monday, my wife calls the Transit cops back about our plates, because they never called us back like we asked them to do. They tell us that they are going to turn the plates in to MVC as they always do with things like this. My wife tells them, "NO, we are responsible for the plates and we want them back so we can turn them in." The officer tells here that, 'But we turn the plates in", being a totally dense ........ better left unsaid there. What would have happened if those were our only plates and they had TOTALLY screwed the pooch on this one... Well, my wife tells them we want a receipt for the plates. We are responsible for them, so we want a receipt if they are going to turn them in. My wife is giving them 21 days to comply, before she starts badgering them for one. I feel she's being a little lenient there, I would have given them a week, but that's me.
At this point, we figure, we know we are going to get our money back from NJMVC. The woman at the MVC office pretty much told us that was going to happen since it was an inter-departmental mistake and totally not our fault. Gave us the address to write to along with all the other info we received. So all seems to be right at this point, even though we are still really angry about this.
Well, a week later, we get a notice from the post office that there is a certified letter waiting for us. We figure it's our receipt. Man, were we ever wrong. It was from the local police department where the train station is and it contained 2, not 1, but 2 "EFFIN" summonses. 1 for abandoning a vehicle (HUH???) and 1 for fictitious plates....WTF??? both are made out to me and now I have to go to EFFIN' court. ARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH. This just gets worse and worse. I can see it now, if the prosecutor gives me a hard time, I can see I'm going to end up in jail for contempt. Blah.
***Dis-engage RANT mode***
Thank ye fer yer patience.
