A post-script on the car debacle.

Well, after the whole car debacle, I wrote a letter to the NYS DMV with a recommendation or two about the license plate surrender process (like letting the vehicle owner *know* that their plates have been surrendered if they were not the ones to turn them in.) and AMAZINGLY I got, not one reply, but two. Both informative. It turns out that our missing license plate (the one from the front of our car we hadn’t noticed was gone) was actually being used by some reprobate on their car. It WAS, in fact, stolen off of our car. The state police confiscated it, and surrendered it to the DMV.

Now, why, you ask, were we allowed to renew our registration 3 months after this? Because the state police did not actually report this information to the DMV until JANUARY. Six Months Had Passed. After that, it only took them 2 months to “catch” us driving on surrendered plates. That we had no idea had been surrendered. Argh.

At least I know how our plates got surrendered now. At least that much is clear. Now, if only someone had had the common courtesy to tell us. (Obviously, if we hadn’t reported our plate missing *and* had renewed our registration, we might not know our plates had been surrendered – but no one thought to check.)
At this point I have determined that almost every single individual at the NYS DMV is competent individually. Each person we have interacted with has treated me with courtesy, and respect, and prompt information. But somehow if you consider the whole lot of them together – the SYSTEM is inept and incompetent.

Further proof that bureaucracy just causes more problems than it solves. (and, it turns out, is impossible to spell on the first try.)