A few months ago, I received a notice to renew my registration. I immediately mailed it to my insurance company to be stamped and they promised to send it over to the RMV. Time passed and my registration expired in September. Recently, I was parked in Boston and got a ticket for an expired registration. I’m religious about putting that sticker on my plate as soon as I get it in the mail. So at first I thought my insurance company had goofed, but then I looked back at my bank statement and sure enough, my registration fee check had been cashed by the RMV. I called them immediately and they told me they could send me another – for a fee. “I can’t send it for free, or I’ll get in trouble,” the sweet lady on the other end said to me. So I got dinged with a fee for a duplicate registration. As for the ticket, I’m going to fight it (I was technically registered, even though I didn’t have a sticker. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) But some simple googling revealed several other people complaining about the same problem with the RMV: send in a renewal, forget about it, then get dinged with a ticket. As I told the sweet lady, this cannot all be the fault of the postal service. How often do letters get lost being sent across town? Not often I bet.
So if you can get the RMV to admit that they make mistakes sometimes and explain why they have to charge $25 to resend a registration when there’s a pretty good chance it’s their fault, I’d be impressed. (By the way, I was told they do have a grace period but I had just passed it.) Since the chances of them admitting fault are near zero, I have a suggestion: as soon as you fill out that renewal form, set up a reminder for yourself to check back on it in a few weeks. There’s a pretty good chance your sticker won’t arrive and you won’t realize it until you get dinged with a ticket!