UPDATE: 3-1/2 months later
I thought about doing what silenus suggested, but first I decided to see if I couldn’t get the California DMV to re-issue the VLF Refund check to me in my own name. After all, if they’re sending out a zillion of these checks, I certainly can’t be the only person who’s come across this dillemma.
Furthermore, as soon as I received this check back in March, I realized that having my vehicles’ pink slips in the name of this Trust was a Bad Thing, and quickly went through the rigamarole of transferring my vehicles back into my own name. So, I figured that getting the check re-issued to the Current Owner of the car (me) would be a no-brainer.
Well, not quite. When I called the DMV, the lady who answered the phone said that they would only issue the refund check in the name of the registered owner at the time the registration fee was paid (i.e. the Trust). However, said lady at the DMV was merely the person who answered the phone. The terrible irony with bureaucracy is that the people who answer phones and interact with customers are the least knowledgeable about their own department’s policies. If they had the knowledge and brainpower to fully understand their department’s policies, they wouldn’t be stuck answering phones. So, I poked around the web until I found the California DMV website, and sent off an e-mail to their “send us your questions” e-mail address.
But guess what? That e-mail address was answered by an “automated” system that was about as intelligent as a box of rocks with Alzheimer’s. It saw the keyword “VLF Refund” in the body of my e-mail message, and responded by sending me a description of what the VLF Refund was. :mad:
So, the DMV wasn’t going to be helpful in this … but the name at the top of the check said “California’s State Controller’s Office,” so I figured maybe they might be able to help. After poking around on some .ca.gov websites, I found the State Controller’s Office and sent out an e-mail to their “send us your questions” address. Fortunately, this time, my message was read by a human being. He/she replied that I should send the check back to the State Controller’s Office P.O. box on the outside of the envelope, along with a copy of the form I’d use to transfer the car into my own name and a note explaining that I wanted the check reissued in my own name. Perfect! Problem solved.
Or so I hoped.
Two-and-a-half months later, I’d heard nothing from the DMV or the State Controller’s Office. I sent off a reply to the State Controller’s Office e-mail I’d received two-and-a-half months earlier, asking “What’s going on?”. He/she replied by saying that I’d supposedly followed procedure correctly, and should call thus-and-such phone number at the State Controller’s Office to see what’s going on. I called … and the first question they asked when I described the situation was “What was the warrant number on the check?”
The what?!
You know, the serial number at the top of the check. You did copy down that information before you sent the check back to the State Controller’s Office, even though they didn’t tell you to, didn’t you? :mad:
In any event, the lady on the phone said they would’ve re-deposited the check into their own account and then forwarded it to the DMV to have it reissued. She transferred me to some phone number at the DMV that she thought was appropriate. The lady at the DMV who then answered the phone blithely informed me that “We don’t do that.” So the State Controller’s Office said I could get the check reissued in my own name, but once again the DMV said no I couldn’t. :mad: Again, I figured the lady on the phone at the DMV might not know what she was talking about, but phone bureacrats will resist all attempts to get them to admit that they are wrong. She ended the call by getting my address and saying she’d mail me a standard form for reissuing a check. Maybe if she were wrong, I’d get lucky and there’d be a place on the form where I could put the name I wanted the check to be reissued under.
But, no such luck. Not only did the form have the name of my Trust hard-coded on it in stone, the only three options for why I wanted the check reissued were “It was lost or destroyed,” “It was stolen,” and “I never received it.” There was no option, not even a write-in option, for “I sent it back to get it reissued.” Sigh. I replied to the more recent State Controller’s Office e-mail saying that I’m clearly pushing the wrong bureaucratic buttons and would they please advise. I got no reply. 
Evidently the first 2 times I’d gotten a response from the State Controller’s Office, I was very lucky and there was someone on duty who actually gave a damn.
Various scenarios swam through my head. If the DMV lady was right, they would reissue the check in the name of the Trust again. Maybe there was some place I could go where the DMV would cash their checks. Surely, there must be people in California who don’t have bank accounts, and the DMV would have to have a way to accomodate them. Of course, if I went to one of these hypothetical “DMV Check Cashing” locations, I’d have to prove that I was authorized to cash checks in the name of the Trust, but I could just show 'em the notarized Trust documents and that ought to be enough. That is, if I could get the DMV to reissue the check at all. There was still no place on that form for me to tell them that the check had been redeposited. Maybe I could call the DMV lady again and ask her what to put on the form in that –
Suddenly, there was a message on my answering machine. It was from another lady at the DMV, but this one evidently knew what she was doing. They’d forwarded my request back to the appropriate department at the State Controller’s Office, and would be reissuing the check in my name!! Woo hoo! Success! A ray of light in my darkest hour! She said the check would have to be issued as “<my name> formerly known as <the Trust’s name>”, for whatever bureaucratic accounting reasons they had, but that should be sufficient.
And just 3 or 4 days ago, I finally received this reissued check. I walked right up to the teller in my Credit Union – coincidentally the same teller I’d tried and failed to deposit the check through when it was made out in the Trust’s name 3-1/2 months ago – and told her “I want to deposit this check into my checking account. Will this ‘formerly known as’ notation be a problem?”
She saw the oddball Trust name and asked, “What happened the last time you tried to deposit this?” I triumphantly replied, “That time, the check was made out to the Trust only. This time, it’s made out to me, ‘formerly known as’ the Trust.” <smug> She accepted the check and it’s in process right now.
The adventure won’t be over until the check clears in the next few days, but with any luck, that will happen and all will be right with the world, they lived happily ever after, the end.
