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Lost Car Title for Export Vehicle

Exporting Vehicles and Title Requirements
If you’re looking for a title for your vehicle, it may be because you’re wanting to export the vehicle, and the export process requires that you present a title or other ownership documents. The export requirements are often different from the requirements for getting a new title.

Differing Requirements for Export
In fact, the DMV has different requirements than things like customs, freight forwarders, or other government agencies that restrict the export of vehicles. One thing to look at is: are you the shipper or the owner? If you’re the owner of the vehicle, that means the title is in your name. If you are the shipper or the shipping company, sometimes you may not be the owner but are shipping the vehicle at the owner’s request. Those are two different things, and the documentation might be different, or you might need the owner to become involved if you’re the shipper.

Case Study: Insufficient Documentation
We had a case today where we talked to somebody on the phone who actually had a vehicle that was in the US that had been shipped back from China. They tried to ship it from here to China. It made it on the boat from the US, got to China, and the Chinese government would not let it come off the boat because the documentation was insufficient. So it had to come all the way back, come off the boat, and now it’s back in the US pending title clarification and the right documents.

Preparing Before Going to the Port
Make sure you fix these problems before you even go to the port. Even if you have the vehicle not on the boat, if it’s at the port waiting for you to fix a title, it’s costing money for storage at the port. You also don’t have control of the vehicle. It can get damaged if it sits for three months without being started or run. It could have other mechanical problems. So make sure you have all the title paperwork cleared up, correct, and in your hands before you even bring it to the port facility.

Customs and title requirements
Customs is your first obstacle. Even if you try to ship a car as parts only without a title, customs will get involved with a vehicle or even major component parts of a vehicle because they’re trying to prevent stolen vehicles and stolen parts from being exported where you may not need the same type of titling requirements.

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Lost Car Title Consumer Protection

After I’ve been spoken with tens of thousands of clients over the years, we see a lot of people being scammed and ripped off by online title companies for things they can do themselves.

Common Issues
Just because you made an error—maybe you didn’t receive a title when you bought a car, maybe you lost a title when you bought a car, maybe the seller misled you and said, “I’m gonna get you the title later,” maybe they said, “Just call DMV and they’ll give you a title”—don’t get ripped off again by paying hundreds of dollars, sometimes more than the car cost, to an online car title company to get you a title.

DIY Title Solutions
You can do this yourself. If it’s your car, you deserve a title. There is a legal way to get a title no matter what, just because you don’t know it yet and somebody online does. Don’t pay them hundreds of dollars to get a title when you can do it yourself.

Vermont Title Option
If the car’s 15 years or older, you can get a title from the state of Vermont no matter where you live, and you’re good to go.

Newer Car Solutions
If it’s newer than fifteen years, there are legal methods depending on where you are and what the process is. You can contact us through our website, consumers title org, and we can go through and show you what those methods might be to get a title.

Conclusion
Don’t get ripped off again just because you made a mistake in not receiving a title or losing a title.

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Illegal Lost Car Title Scams

There are some illegal title duplication scams that we run into every day. These are ways that people try to get lost titles on cars, and people charge a lot of money to get lost titles for cars using these scams.

Mechanic’s Lien Scam
One of the most common is a mechanic’s lien scam. It’s usually a body shop or a towing company that will use the mechanic’s lien process to get a title for a car. It’s extremely illegal. The mechanic’s lien is supposed to get them a title for a car that they did work on. Did somebody then pay the bill? If they’re using the process to get titles for people that never had anything to do with their shop, you can get in big trouble. There’s people that get arrested for that all the time.

Title Agent Scam
There’s also scams where you actually have to sign over the title to the title agent. Usually, it’s an online company or you have to sign a power of attorney saying that you’re allowing them to sign anything they want to on that car. That, in effect, is signing over your rights of that car to that company that you don’t know who they are. You don’t know where they are. Is it a P.O. box? Are they licensed?

Unlicensed Companies
The other scam is exactly that: they’re unlicensed companies. In order to process car titles in most states, you actually have to have a state license to do business specifically for car titling and registration. If you don’t have that license, you’re operating illegally. And if you do business with somebody like that and they do something wrong or they file fraudulent documents, you’re gonna be on the hook for it. You could lose your car, you can get in legal trouble, and those are the kind of things you want to avoid to get a car title.

The Importance of Legal Processes
There are dozens of news stories every week. If you do a search on Google for car title scams or car title fraud or illegal car titles, you’ll find dozens of new stories. We see them all the time. You’ll find them on our blog about people who are getting in trouble every day for doing some type of improper or fraudulent process to get a lost title for a car rather than going through the legal process to do it, where you can get a title that won’t be revoked from you at a later date.

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How to get a Title for an Abandoned Vehicle

Getting a Title for an Abandoned Vehicle
If you’re looking to get a title for an abandoned vehicle, here’s a technique that you can use to do it yourself for no fee without having to pay a title agent.

Asking Key Questions
First of all, ask a few questions: Do you know who abandoned it? Do you know that the person doesn’t want the car? And will somebody give you a bill of sale for the vehicle? Maybe the property owner, maybe a relative of the that where the car was from, a friend who knows?

Obtaining a Bill of Sale
If you have that bill of sale of somebody who says, “I’m transferring you this car,” and you know that whoever owned the car last doesn’t want it, you can present that bill of sale along with a small fee, about $40, directly to the DMV in the state of Vermont. No questions asked. They will issue you a registration title.

Converting the Registration Title
Once you have that registration title, you can convert that to a full title in any state in the United States. It’s recognizable by all 50 states.

Summary
So for an abandoned vehicle, as long as somebody will transfer it to you, make sure that you get a bill of sale. Go straight to the DMV in Vermont, and they’ll issue a registration title, no questions asked.

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Duplicate Title Instructions

So here’s how you get a duplicate title for a vehicle. It’s very, very simple. Now, this applies for a true duplicate scenario where you actually have a vehicle already titled in your name that you just lost a document.

Gather Required Documents
Collect up your ID, the registration for the car, any lien releases if there was a loan on the car even if it’s paid off.

Apply to the Correct State
You go to the state where the last title was issued. If you’ve moved since the title was issued or if the title came from another state, you have to apply to that state. You can’t apply to just happen to be where you are right now; it has to be the state where the title came from.

Costs and Submission
It’s very, very cheap. It costs between five and ten dollars in most cases. You present those documents to the DMV or Department of Transportation depending upon what state it is, and they will issue you a brand new title in the same format as the last one—same name, same address. They won’t make any changes. It is truly a duplicate title. It’s not a new title; it’s not any change of information. It is a duplicate title replacement.

Mail Option and Identity Verification
Sometimes the state will do it by mail if you don’t appear in person if the paperwork is notarized. They want to verify that the identity of the person getting the title is really who you say you are because you wouldn’t want somebody just to say that they need a title for your car and have mail it somewhere else. They want to make sure it’s truly you that’s getting the title.

Legal Ownership Requirements
No prior owner can do this. No new owner can do this. It has to come from the actual legal title owner as shown on the document. If there’s two owners, they both have to sign the paperwork.

Conclusion
A duplicate title is actually one of the most easy scenarios of a title replacement, but it has to be where you truly were the legal title owner printed on the front and the lien has been cleared so that you can get a new title exactly as the last one was printed.

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