So I’ve not been posting much recently, largely out of irritation. I can, however, say my HMV Freeway is now fully reassembled and I’ve put 100 miles on it so far.
So the long story short is I purchased this through ebay. Specifically, when you buy a car through ebay, it uses a subcontractor for ebay called “Caramel” (caramel. Get it?). They effectively function as a dealership, handling the title transfer and paperwork. They also charge you a lot for this.
They also, kind of, really suck.
I should be specific, I am pretty confident that the Freeway is a extremely oddball vehicle. Specifically, it has a non-standardized VIN. The laws for US VIN harmonization was passed in 1980, and didn’t require compliance until 1982. However, basically every manufacturer pre-emptively started using harmonized VINs in 1981.
Do you think HMV used a harmonized VIN in 1981? Lolrite. They had planned out these VINs and probably had the stickers printed earlier. You think they would waste that?
So then, a bunch of services, like both ebay and caramel then looked at the vehicles they had seen, and went and wrote a bunch of software (like the ebay website) that (incorrectly) requires all post-1980 vehicles to have a specific VIN format.
So the end result is that basically EVERY step of the purchase process involved me having to call caramel, things would get a bit unstuck, and then things would get a bit further, get stuck again, I’d call again, repeat. I think by the time they actually processed things to the point where I was ready to pick the thing up, I had called them 12+ times.
Then, they started asking for weird crap. My Freeway was previously registered in California, I’m in california, so this should be a straightforward transfer. And they were telling me I needed to do a VIN verification at the DMV.
So I let things sit. Hoping something at their end would eventually go “this hasn’t moved in {time period}. Maybe check if something is wrong”. Did this happen? No.
The Freeway was in pieces in my carport, so I couldn’t exactly drive it anyways, so I wasn’t in a hurry.
So ~4 months passed. With no communication.
Eventually, I had returned the thing to a state where it was drivable again, and drove it to the DMV for the verification.
The very nice fellow at the DMV was completely confused about why I was even there, since the VIN verification is not needed for a intra-california transfer, but he went along and filled out the paperwork himself. There were issues, since whoever restored this thing previously removed the VIN tag from the engine, and damaged the one on the front-area. So there is one readable VIN sticker on the thing. And the paint job on the engine made the engine number nigh unreadable. I wound up with some more information and a verification paper that said I would need to make an appointment with the CHP (California highway patrol) for a more detailed inspection.
At this point, I emailed the verification paperwork to caramel, and they responded telling me I needed to go deal with the CHP.
I responded asking what the hell was going on, since the DMV person said none of this should be needed.
They then finally told me they had lost the title. In the mail from the original seller.
4 months before I dragged this fact out of them.
Caramel provides the mailing label for the title to the person selling the vehicle, so apparently they couldn’t be bothered to even pay for insurance on the title. To handle this, they had applied for a replacement tile. From West Virginia (this explains the process they were trying to get me to do: it’s what you have to do to transfer a car into California. It was originally from WVA). They were trying to get me to do all this extra crap without letting me know it was all because of their error.
At this point, I was absolutely apoplectic.
I basically responded to Caramel, telling them that they could either resolve this with the DMV themselves, or have an agent on their part come and deal with getting things handled at the CHP.
They then took a week, and then called me (whyyyy) and told me they hand it handled, and the license plate was in the mail, and they had gotten a proper, CA title.
Anyways, a week or so later, I had the plate and registration. I have no idea what they did, but the registration has the incorrect engine number on it. They have images of the original title which definitely has the correct engine-number, but they used the value from the vin verification paperwork for some reason.
At this point, I don’t care. The VIN is correct, and I have current and valid registration stickers for the plate. I plan to change the engine anyways, and it’s not exactly valuable, so it is what it is.
