Last month was a joyous event of sending the “kiss off” payment on the Traverse to Santander Consumer USA (these were the people who featured prominently in a complaint to the CFPB which exposed both how much of a paper tiger the CFPB is and not surprising how little Santander cares!).

I was rather concerned that they would screw up sending me the title as they had doing “customer service” but I will give them credit that it was pretty painless and now that my postal carriers know I’m tracking the inbound mail with “USPS Informed Delivery”, they actually delivered it on the day the scanners imaged the front of the envelope. Yay!

But the cover letter doesn’t tell you what you actually need to know to clear their lien off the title. It turns out that NC DMV’s website isn’t particularly clear on what to do, either.

By the time I was done casting about for the procedure, I had my title and the letter and two DMV forms ready to be notarised…one of which (MVR-4) had a couple of sections the lien holder is supposed to fill out and the other (MVR-8) doesn’t need their input at all.

Fortunately, the nice lady on the phone made things much easier on me by telling me that I really wasn’t going for a duplicate title (MVR-4) and that the application for removal of the lien from the certificate of title (MVR-8) is all I’d need to submit with the original title and the lender’s form letter. Oh, and the money. They’ve got to have that, apparently… 😉

Why yes…that’s *MUCH* easier and far less confusing for those of us who aren’t in the automotive titling business. Supposedly, there’s a new electronic titling system in play where the lender just clears the lien on their end electronically and DMV prints out the clean title automatically. Sadly, it wasn’t in play when I got the Traverse six years ago!

Paperwork gyrations and headaches aside…I’m going to try to enjoy the lack of car payments for as long as I possibly can! 🙂