Creative Consumer: Avoid Parking Tickets After Your Car Is Sold
Elisabeth Leamy's tips about what to do to avoid trouble when selling your car.
Oct. 22, 2007 — -- Remember how I told you I wrecked my car a couple weeks ago? Ah, yes, I too am a consumer, and expensive experiences like this always remind me of good advice to share with you readers.
The insurance company wanted to total the car and sell it for scrap, and I reluctantly agreed. When I handed the vehicle over, one of the documents I had to sign was something alerting the DMV that the car is no longer mine. Turns out that is a very important step.
If the title isn't transferred out of your name, you could end up having a retro relationship with your old car for years to come. It's the buyer's responsibility to transfer the title at the DMV. But if you sell your car to a disorganized individual or a disreputable dealer, he may not bother. After all, it takes time and costs money.
In fact, some of the sketchier used car dealers never transfer titles because they sell a car to someone with bad credit, then repossess it, then sell it to another bad risk and repo it again and so on. The shadiest used car lots avoid putting titles in their own name because they don't want the car traced back to them when somebody discovers the odometer's been rolled back. When you sell your car, it's not uncommon to get stern mailings about unpaid parking tickets the new owner has racked up.
But it can be much worse than that. Tim C. was glad to get a little money for his used van. He sold it to a used car dealer and went on his way. Three months later, he received a registered letter saying the van had been towed and he owed a couple hundred dollars to get it back. Turns out the car dealer had sold the van to an inmate in a work release program and never bothered to transfer the title.
When I investigated, I discovered the inmate didn't even have a driver's license and may not have been insured. Somehow the used car dealer got the van back and sold it to another person. I learned that person then lent the van to a friend who was driving it when he got arrested for shoplifting. Once again Tim was on the police department's radar because of a vehicle he didn't even own anymore. It took him months to straighten it out.
