Getting Money Back From DMV Is No Small Project

John Ferrara of Sunset Beach is livid at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Two weeks ago, he sent the DMV a check for $341 to renew the registration for the Geo Prizm he had leased for his 20-year-old daughter the year before.

The next day, however, something happened that changed Ferrara’s plans. During an unplanned trip to the dealer, he noticed a Chevy Tahoe, the kind of vehicle his daughter had been dreaming about driving for years.

“They gave me a killer deal,” said Ferrara, 56, “so I had them draw up the papers.”

Then he remembered the money he had sent to the DMV. No problem, Ferrara thought; the registration fee was still several days from being due, so he would ask them to send it back.

But when he called the DMV in Sacramento, he was told that once the money leaves his hands, it becomes the property of the state and cannot be refunded. His only recourse, according to the DMV, was to request a refund from the dealership--a party unlikely to pay the registration fee for a car now sitting on its lot. (A vehicle that’s not being driven need not be registered.)

“That’s stealing,” Ferrara said. “I think the DMV is cheating me.

William Madison, a spokesman for the department, confirmed the essence of Ferrara’s story. According to the California Vehicle Code, Madison said, by mailing a check, Ferrara “demonstrated his intent” to register the car.

“With the number of vehicles we have, if every person who paid for a vehicle came back and said, ‘I want it back,’ it would be incumbent on us to spend a lot of the taxpayers’ money,” he said. “If someone pays in advance, they have to get the money back from the person to whom they sell the vehicle.”

Ferrara said he intends to send the new vehicle stickers back when he receives them and take the DMV to small-claims court, if necessary.

“Taking something that doesn’t belong to you is illegal, unethical and immoral.”

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When Mary Elizabeth Mount of Fountain Valley asked Street Smart last month why signs indicating construction and a lane closure had been sitting on Edinger Avenue in Huntington Beach for five months--with no construction work in sight--a city spokesman responded that the signs would come down immediately.

They’re still up.

Traffic engineer Jim Otterson said he was mistaken when he told Street Smart that the signs from Magnolia Street to Beach Boulevard had been left inadvertently by a private contractor working on Beach Boulevard.

In re-examining the matter, Otterson said, he learned that the signs had been posted by a different contractor for a seismic retrofitting project along the nearby San Diego Freeway. But the project was moved to another spot, and the signs were forgotten.

“The contractor has been directed to either take them down or cover them up within a week,” Otterson said Friday. “We want the signs out of there as much as [Mount] does. They are giving false information and we want the signs that are up to be credible.”

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And speaking of incredible signs, Otterson is getting rid of another one on the very same street.

“It is totally false and has gotten me lost, as well as my wife,” Mission Viejo resident Herbert V. Abrams wrote about the sign on eastbound Edinger Avenue just past Golden West Street pointing left and reading “405 South.” In fact, to get to the nearest ramp to the southbound San Diego Freeway, one should travel several more blocks straight ahead on Edinger.

“It does confuse people,” Otterson said of the sign. “I’m not sure how it got there. I don’t know how long it’s been there either, but it won’t be there for long.”

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition.