QUOTE(Lemon Crevice @ Jun 27 2007, 10:40 PM)
A more on topic Comment/Question:
Any new updates on when your getting your 240? When i got my jeep from NH( i live in MA) it took only a 4 days to get a title because the previous owner didn't have one, but maybe thats because it was from NH.
That depends how old your jeep is... 15 years or older and a title is not required in the state of NH (they wont even issue one) meaning that a registration and bill of sale from the previous owner is all that is needed. to get a title in another state.
my patience are wearing thin with this 240 deal... I've been keeping one eye on craigs list for another solid one but all of them either have 100K+ miles on them, are beat to snot, or they want way more than the car is worth.
Anyway a brief run down of this title crap:-Back in may I looked at the car, agreed to pay $5500 for it gave the kid $500 for a deposit the rest to be paid when the title came in because he was waiting for the state to send him the title and we signed paperwork to this effect.
I was told that he had only owned the car since last October, the previous owner was from CT, and it wasn't driven the winter, he had only just registered it in the spring and decided that he didn't like having an automatic. He also pointed to an old BMW 5 series that he bought as a replacement for the 240 as his summer car.
I was told that it would be "a week to a week and a half" before I got the title and he said "I wish I had put a rush on it so we wouldn't have to wait"
-One week after putting down my deposit I get a call and was told that the previous owner had all of their titles put on hold and that it would take another month to month and a half. He also let me know that if I didn't want to wait that long he'd understand and would give me my $500 deposit back. I'd told him I'd wait.
-Over the next week I asked a few people I knew in Maine if they knew anything about title law there and how long things take... I heard that transferring a title from another state can take as long as 45 days before the state will issue a new one, but it's usually much shorter
-I then decided to call the Maine BMV and see if they'd give me any information... the lady who answered the phone was very helpful and when I gave her the VIN she informed me that not only was there no record of a Maine title having been issued there was no record of any application having ever been filed, nor was there any application being held for any reason... I informed her that the car had Maine plates on it and gave her the license plate number she confirmed that it was registered but she had no idea how they managed to register the car without a title... And she was adamant about not buying the car until I had the title (duh, but it was nice of her to make sure).
According to her the only way to get the title was to either A. find the original one and have it signed over or B. have the previous owner from CT file for a duplicate title and re-sell it (on paper).
-I then called the CT DMV, this time armed with only the VIN and the knowledge that the original owner was from CT (no idea who they are). After being put on hold for OVER AN HOUR (thank god for speaker phone next to my computer) I told the operator my situation and wanted to know if a title transfer had been filed. She asked me what year the car was and when I told her 1995 she insisted that I didn't need one in NH... after I explained to her that the law don't require them after 15 years and the car is only 12 she put me on hold for 10 minutes and came back to tell me that I was right. I then gave her the vin and she informed me that the the car was still legally a CT vehicle, and she had no record of any paperwork having been filed for a transfer to another state, nor any paperwork having been filed for a duplicate title...
-I sent an email out to the guy in Main telling him what I found out from calling the Maine BMV and CT DMV, told him I wasn't accusing him of anything but to just give me straight up what was going on.
-He told me that he didn't buy the car directly from the CT owner but instead from a dealer, the dealer was supposed to file the title application for him and he registered it by using the dealer bill of sale (which is a legal alternative to a title). He also told me that his new car was registered and that the 240 was being taken off the road (good)
-A week later I get another email from him saying that he found out the dealer never sent in the paperwork (no shit, I him that a week prior when I did the research myself) and that he was going to try to get in contact with him but he only had an email address so communication was slow (huh?). He said that he also found out that if he can't get the title from the dealer he would have to file for an "investigation of ownership" which can take up to 2 months, so he was going to try to get the title from the dealer... Strange how when I called the Maine BMV they never mentioned anything about that...
-last Thursday I get a phone call from him: he got a phone number for the dealer and talked to him.. the Dealer was going to be in Augusta on Friday and was going to look for the title but he was pretty sure that it was sent out way back when. The guy in main assured me that he would be calling me back Friday after he had heard from the dealer
so that was a week ago and I still haven't heard from him. I might call him tonight to chew him out.
A lot of people are just telling me to walk away but you know what, it's not costing me anything to wait for this chuckle head, and he made it clear when he bumped up the time table to months instead of weeks that he'd give me my deposit back. In the mean time I've been looking for a comparable 240, but I've had no such joy yet.
On more than one occasion I've been tempted to call the CT DMV to see if they'd give me the name and address of the official owner of the car, contact them and have them re-sell the card directly to me and then go have it repoed from the chump in Maine
