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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Buying a Car With No Title

Are you thinking about buying a car without getting a title? Well, here’s some things to consider before you do that.

Check the Title
First of all, ask the seller why they don’t have a title. If they are the legal owner of that car, they’re supposed to have a title document in their hands with their name on it that they can sign over to you on the spot. Don’t ask for it later. Don’t let them delay because if they don’t have it in their hands, there’s a reason for it.

Verify the Story
Whatever the story is they tell you about not having a title, verify the story. If it’s because they lost it, well, have them get a duplicate. If it’s because the bank is sending it to them, make sure the bank actually has the loan paid off. Is it because it’s in somebody else’s name? Well, then they’re selling somebody else’s car and you want to deal with that person.

Hold Back Money
If for some reason you have some very urgent necessity to buy a car that doesn’t have a title, hold back some or all of the money until you get the title in hand. I can’t tell you how many times we get calls; it’s every single day from somebody who bought a car on Craigslist, eBay, from a friend, in the parking lot, that the person said, “I’ll send you the title,” like out of the home, “I forgot to bring it with me, I’ll mail it to you,” and then they never hear from them again. Their pager number goes blank, they can’t text them, they disappear. That’s because they never had the title to begin with. So if they don’t have it on them, you’re probably never gonna get it, and it may cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars to get the title if you can get it at all.

Get Identification
Make sure you get a good ID from that seller. Look at their license, write down their name, make sure that the name matches up with that title. If you don’t get a good ID, you’re not gonna know who you’re dealing with, and until you have that car in your name, you’re gonna be at risk.

Check for Jump Title
Also, look to see if it’s a jump title. Make sure it’s not sold from one person to another to another because that might cause problems getting the title in your name if each one of those transactions has not been logged with the DMV. A lot of times, cars without titles are a case of passing the buck. Somebody got a car, they didn’t get a title, they couldn’t get one, they sell it to somebody else. That person’s run into the same problem, now they sell it to you. You don’t want to be the game of musical chairs with no chair.

Title Pawn or Lien
These titles are not easy to get if you don’t have it in your hand. The most common reason for not having a title is title pawn or lien. Somebody has a car, they have the title, they need some extra cash, they go to TitleMax or one of the title pawn companies. They hand over their title to get a loan on it and then they sell the car. Well, you’re not gonna get that title until the loan’s paid off. Title pawn, TitleMax, any of the companies that lend money, they hold the title for a reason—to get their money. So they’re not going to give it up just because somebody else has the car. Now, the oldest trick in the book, they’re not gonna fall for it.

Unwind the Deal
If you have a car that doesn’t have a title, try to go back to that seller and have them unwind that deal. You can do any kind of search you want; you can search Carfax, you can search online. Those aren’t going to catch things like liens or things like jump title. Your only protection is actually to have a title that has the name of the seller on it, that you watch them sign, and put in your hands today.

Real-Life Example
We just had a customer that was sold a car and given some paperwork by a body shop saying that they’re doing a mechanic’s lien to get a title. They just gave them all the unfinished mechanic’s lien paperwork and said, “All you got to do is bring it to DMV.” Well, the reality is they didn’t do the mechanic’s lien process correctly, so this buyer is never going to get a title.

Conclusion
The only way you can be assured is to get the title handed to you. If you don’t get it, you’re going to be at risk of never getting a title or facing great expense to get one before you can legally own that vehicle and put it into your name.

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