Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles, what a bunch of friggin' morons!

[jkhonea]

Just got a notice in the mail from the department of motor vehicles saying we owe a $25 penalty for no insurance on the motorcycles. Considering we just changed insurances the other month, we were sure we did, especially considering we've still been getting tags yearly even though they haven't been out of the garage for two years. So Mary calls Metlife and yes, lo and behold, we have insurance.

Well, now she's on the phone with the brain trust. Now they're saying that we let insurance laps 5 fuggin' years ago! The idiot was asking who we had for insurance then. Needless to say, kinda hard to track insurance back five years. She's asked for a manager and been on the phone for about twenty minutes on hold waiting for someone. Basically, they're trying to penalize us for something that supposedly happened five years ago. Oh yes, and now they're saying if you have a registered vehicle, whether you drive it or not, you MUST have insurance on it. There are so many things that seem wrong with this.

So basically, watch your mail carefully for idiocy from the state of Georgia. Looks like they're running low on money again and trying to pull some crap to get money in. According to the letter, if we don't pay the $25 fine, we're going to have more penalties assessed.

This is absolutely insane.

[Lazarus]

Sounds very scammish. I would say just pay the $25 but if you can easily prove you are right I'd fight it on principal. Is that a law down here? That you need insurance even if its not on the road? That sucks. Never heard of that up north.

[John]

Go to Gwinnett Co Tag office. They have a form to fill out which gets you out of the penalty. I just went throught the same thing

[ugar-6]

Tell them to "prove" that you didn't have it 5 years ago. Until then, stuff your $25 bill where the sun don't shine.

[KTM Rider]

If the tag is current, one is required to keep liability at a minimum in force regardless of usage habits or face a fine for letting it lapse. Does it make sense? No. Is it the law? Yes. I think it is to keep people from buying a policy so they can get a tag and a current sticker and then let the policy lapse and still drive without being noticed.

As for your specific situation, I am with Kevin. Tell them to prove you didnt have insurance by giving you the name of the companies involved and the alleged dates of the lapse and until then dont pay them a dime. You may also want to look and see when the current law was passed. I think it was more recently than 5 years ago and laws are not retroactive. Good luck:up:

[Gamecock]

This is good info to know as I'm selling the FZ1 and was thinking of just dropping the insurance coverage since I'm not riding it....apparently that is against the law since my tag is good until June 14.

[KTM Rider]

You can call up the tag office and turn in your tag and then call up your insurance co. and drop all but comp and then let your bike sit worry free without incurring any penalties or fees or any exposure to risk of fire or theft. Your back ad valorum taxes would be due at the time of registration in the new owner's name if you sell it after your bday though!!....unless the buyer doesnt live in GA:up:

[jkhonea]

Mary FINALLY got someone that knew their head from a hole in the ground with the state. He sent us a form to fill out saying the reason the bikes weren't insured for the short period was because they were in storage and couldn't be ridden. We both know they were insured but have already been going through insurance company records for proof. This is the easier option. Going to fill those out and fax them back. What's amazing is it took more than four hours of calls to get this answer while the rest of the people with the state wanted to say simply no, you have to pay the fine and if you don't, we're going to through much heavier fines and penalties at you.

Friggin' money grabbing douchebags.

[Eagalicious]

I understand you had insurance so it will be no problem for you. But just for those that are curious, here you go.

http://www.lexis-nexis.com/hottopics/gacode/

[eddie98]

What Frank said is correct. My Civic broke down and sat in the garage for over a year. Din’t get a tag for that year and i still had to pay a fee for that year that I didn’t drive it.

I once got a letter that I owed late fees for not renewing my tag on a bike, turns out I sold the bike like 6 months before that. Just told them I sold it and they dropped it. Cherokee county was easy to deal with.

[Ibleedgreen]

I once got a letter that I owed late fees for not renewing my tag on a bike, turns out I sold the bike like 6 months before that. Just told them I sold it and they dropped it. Cherokee county was easy to deal with.

^ Happened to me too, just filled out the back of the notice about when I sold it and mailed it back in. Paulding is easy to deal with too.

[jkhonea]

^ Happened to me too, just filled out the back of the notice about when I sold it and mailed it back in. Paulding is easy to deal with too.

Oh I think the root of a lot of my fun is Gwinnett County. These idiots couldn't manage their way out of a wet paper sack.

[Derrick]

^ Happened to me too, just filled out the back of the notice about when I sold it and mailed it back in. Paulding is easy to deal with too.
Just had to do the same thing...Fulton county though.

[coolbreeze]

You can call up the tag office and turn in your tag and then call up your insurance co. and drop all but comp and then let your bike sit worry free without incurring any penalties or fees or any exposure to risk of fire or theft. Your back ad valorum taxes would be due at the time of registration in the new owner's name if you sell it after your bday though!!....unless the buyer doesnt live in GA:up:
Yep, when I decided I was selling one of our cars that wasn't running. I didn't want to pay for a new tag. DMV said I had to turn in the tag if I cancel insurance.

Good that you got it worked out.

[Eagalicious]

Oh I think the root of a lot of my fun is Gwinnett County. These idiots couldn't manage their way out of a wet paper sack. +1m That is the absolute truth..
Just got to work and a couple of my co-workers /friends just got the same notices...

[jkhonea]

+1m That is the absolute truth..
Just got to work and a couple of my co-workers /friends just got the same notices...

One interesting piece of information we found out about this from the insurance company. Apparently Gwinnett County at least and maybe the State of Georgia decided to tell ALL insurance companies to go back through ALL of their records so they can find these little incidents. I would love to think they are doing this in our best interests, but something deep down inside tells me its just another money grab.

[wbeck257]

It might not be the DMV's fault -- consider it a blessing that you got that letter, rather than finding out when they impound your car.

My insurance company screwed up and changed my VIN in their system. When it reported to the state the VIN's w/ insurance my actual VIN was left off. DMV automatically suspended my registration and reported that my tag # no longer had valid insurance. I found this out after I got popped for speeding. It took over an hour on the phone with various people to convince the cop to now impound my car. The next day I got my insurance company straightened out and the DMV dropped the $25 fee. I still have to goto court to fight the tickets I got for suspended registration and driving w/o insurance.

I would say chances are it is your insurance company that has ****ed up..

[wallypiper]

Look. The state requires minimum, and I mean really minimum, liability insurance on all registered vehicles. There is an assumption that if your vehicle is registered, it can and might be used on public roads. They have this law to protect us from uninsured assholes. If you want to stop insuring a vehicle because you are not using it, you can unregister it. There's a form for that. They don't do this to raise money. They do it to make sure, or at least try to make sure, that everybody has minimal liability insurance so when some nimrod teebones you, you aren't left holding the bag.


One interesting piece of information we found out about this from the insurance company. Apparently Gwinnett County at least and maybe the State of Georgia decided to tell ALL insurance companies to go back through ALL of their records so they can find these little incidents. I would love to think they are doing this in our best interests, but something deep down inside tells me its just another money grab.

This, on the other hand, sounds like an attempt to find some money to collect. It really isn't relevant, at this point, whether or not a vehicle was properly insured 5 years ago. Although it would, technically, be a violation of the law, it's stupid to go fishing for $25 fines. I would be willing to bet that most people who get the letter are in the same boat as you. That is, there was some insurance/paperwork/reporting screwup that caused them to flag your car as uninsured when it actually was insured.

But it's not stupid to monitor whether or not people have insurance. Businesses can be self insured. I'm not sure about the requirements for doing that and I don't know it there's any way for an individual to do it but there should be as many people have enough money in the bank to cover the state's minimum requirement for liability coverage.

The requirement that you have liability insurance is much more than 5 years old. It has been that way for as long as I've been registering vehicles in GA, which goes back to about 1975. The database that the insurance companies update for the state is fairly new, however. But the state could have insurance companies search for policy lapses and/or drops with or without that database. They would just have to cross reference registrations in their records with the drop dates from the insurance companies.

On the plus side, we recently changed the insurance on one of our vehicles and it went through without a hitch as far as I know. Certainly the next time we renewed the registration, it showed in their database as being insured. It is probably a good idea if you don't intend to take a vehicle out of service to always overlap the insurance coverage for at least 30 days, maybe 60, to make sure that the new policy is reported to the state before the drop on the old policy is reported. If you drop before you put the new policy in place without unregistering the vehicle, you have broken the law. It may seem dumb or unfair or intrusive but it's actually not so bad given that the purpose is to make sure everybody has at least a little bit of liability insurance.

[jkhonea]

I've had everything I've owned insured all the way through, whether I'm riding or driving them or not. One of my main points is this is from a supposed lapse FIVE YEARS AGO. Not last week, not last year, five years ago! In that time, I've gotten tags for the bikes EVERY SINGLE YEAR and never a mention of a laps in insurance. Ever.