So, how many of you have sold your own car to a private buyer before? And when you sold the car, did you remove the plates yourself, or leave them on?
If you were like me and did not remove them, you might find yourself in trouble down the road. I had never sold a car by myself before, and was in a rush to move for Iceland a few days after that. No one mentioned anything about removing the old plates; just transferring the title, getting new plates, and sending a seller's report back to my home state (original plates are from there). Did all that, thought I was in the clear.
Then I get a ticket in the mail (at my mom's house in Seattle) for a parking ticket in our old town in Pennsylvania. In DECEMBER 2007... 10 months after I sold the damn car to some college chick who didn't even realize it was a manual until she bought the thing. Anyway, needless to say, apparently she's been driving around on MY OLD PLATES for at least 10 months... god knows what else she's been doing with the car. I should be grateful that I caught it this way, instead of finding out she's robbed a bank with those plates on it.
The weird thing is, I went WITH her to the PA State DMV to have the title transferred... and they handed her the new plates right then and there, and we got things all squared away (I thought). So nothing really makes sense... unless she thought since the tabs still said FEB 08, that she could get away with driving it until now?? Did she not know that if you are caught driving a car (during a routine traffic stop) with plates from a registered-as-sold car (which mine was, in WA state), that you face severe penalties/fines? It's actually a misdemeanor, which I learned during my day-long sorting out of this situation and calling various states' DMV's and police departments.
I see the light at the end of this tunnel, since the car was officially out of my name when she got the ticket... but I just wanted to remind everyone to REMOVE YOUR EFFING PLATES when you sell a car to a private buyer! (And don't toss them in the trash, either... because people can pick them up and keep using them, for all kinds of dastardly deeds.)
Anyone else had this problem? Or did you all know this ahead of time, and I missed the memo...