Q: We bought a car, the dealer registered it to wrong person, temp tag now expired. Dealer now won’t reply.
We bought the car on the first of the year. Financing is fine, insurance is fine. Dealership issued a 30 day tag, which expired on the 30th. We now cannot drive the car, because the dealership never sent us a permanent plate when we realized they’d registered it to me and a complete stranger, as opposed to me and my spouse. We now no longer get any response to our requests for updates, and it’s been 2 weeks. We have no idea who to reach out to. The DMV doesn’t service these kinds of situations in our state, we only have tag offices and license offices. I don’t even know what kind of attorney I would need to call for help.
A:
The North Carolina DMV DOES have an office that handles these kind of claims called the "License and Theft Bureau".
Go to this link (copy and paste into your browser)
https://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/offices-services/locate-dmv-office/Pages/dmv-offices.aspx
Turn OFF the sliders on the right of the map which are automatically set ONLY to find driver license and license plate. Turn ON the slider for "License and Theft Bureau". These offices are often only staffed a few days a week. Locate the onle in your county or the closest one to your county and contact them for further assistance. A dealer not issuing a permanent tag will get a phone call from an officer and you would be very surprised how fast they will respond. If they do not respond, the dealer can have its license to sell cars suspended, they can be fined, etcetera.
You should also file a complaint wiht the NC Attorney General (copy and paste this link)
https://ncdoj.gov/file-a-complaint/motor-vehicle-complaint/
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