Call Kurtis: Major Typo On Pink Slip

FOLSOM (CBS13) - Meghan Wilson is looking to sell her 2004 Volvo.

"We recently had another child and we needed a bigger car," she says.

Wilson and her husband were ready to trade it in for a new car in July when a salesman found a problem.

"The dealership was running a CARFAX report on the car and they noticed that the odometer and the title on the car did not match up," Wilson tells us.

She says she has paperwork proof the car, had 18,000 miles on it when she bought it. But the DMV printed 118,000 on the title. The situation might seem fishy to dealerships because the car currently has just 78,000 miles on it.

"They said it's actually hard nowadays to actually roll back the odometer but there's obviously tricks they said that people can do," says Wilson.

The dealership wouldn't take the trade-in until the DMV straightened out the title. So that was the next stop for Wilson. She spent four hours at a DMV office, filling out paperwork and getting the car inspected.

Wilson says, "The clerk who helped me said 'I understand this is our mistake.'"

And Wilson says she was told it would take 30 to 45 days to get her new title. The DMV took her old one and gave her a document saying her pink slip is "in suspense."

More than three months later, she still didn't have her corrected title.

"The comment I kept continually getting from everyone that I spoke with at DMV was, 'Because of furloughs, this is all because of furloughs,'" Wilson says.

So what's the holdup? We got in touch with the DMV. They admit "there is no doubt the department made mistakes at several points in this case" starting with that odometer mistake back in 2006. The d-m-v claims it caught it back then but "a new title simply wasn't issued at that time." And then they admit to losing her recent application for a new pink slip. Finally, a week and a half after we got involved Wilson's problem was fixed. She received her new title in the mail.

"If someone called and told me my title's in the mail, I'd be very pleasantly surprised and excited," says Wilson.

So how long should this process take? The DMV couldn't tell us, saying they're backlogged. But now if Wilson wants to trade in that car all she has to do is show that new title proving the current mileage.

Here is the DMV's entire explanation of the title error:

Our manager can tell that a correction was made to the vehicle record back in 2006, but frankly, there is just no way to determine why a new title simply wasn't issued at that time. We just don't know. When the Wilsons' loan was subsequently paid off, DMV issued the Wilsons a new title on 1/12/07, but we can't tell what the 2007 title showed, since that paperwork was misplaced as described above. As a result, we can't determine at this point if the corrected odometer reading was indeed on that 2007 title or not.

The Wilson's application for a corrected title was sent to headquarters from the field office on July 26, 2010. This type of transaction requires that microfilm be verified by the Registrations Operations Division and then reviewed by the department's Investigations Division, and that's what happened. From what our manager can determine, after their review, the Investigations Division sent the application back to the registration processing unit in early September. The records indicate that for some reason-we are not sure exactly why-a processing unit technician reviewed the file once again on 9/27/10…and the record was updated to show it was being sent back to Investigations. Again, we cannot determine the rationale for that action, and Investigations has no record of having received it back in their office. On or about 10/13/10, a registration processing unit confirmed that the application had been received back in the incoming mail section on 10/13/10---but no one could locate it after that date-even after an extensive search was conducted. That is why documents were reconstructed by Kitty and a new title and registration documents were issued last week to the Wilsons.

Unfortunately, due to the backlogs in both the registration processing and Investigations units, cases of this nature can take weeks to fully examine and resolve. DMV cannot provide any sort of average timeframe, simply because every case is unique in some way.

Again, there is no doubt the department made mistakes at several points in this case that affected the Wilsons. And as I said a couple of weeks ago, we have absolutely apologized to the Wilsons for their time, trouble and inconvenience and have issued them new, corrected documents.

Steve Haskins
DMV Public Affairs