The government’s Cash for Clunkers program, which ended at 8 p.m. on Aug. 24, was designed to get old cars off the road and give their owners a discount on a new car. Unfortunately, the program proved to be a pain in the neck for car dealerships and anyone else involved due to the government changing the rules halfway through the first month.
I worked at Hyundai of New Port Richey in Pasco County for the past month helping to process these “clunker” deals by getting the massive amounts of paperwork ready to be submitted to the government through their website. The dealership plus its two smaller counterparts Hyundai and Mazda of Wesley Chapel procured a combined 400 plus clunker deals. At $3,000 or $4,500 a piece that’s over $1.6 million.
In order for a car to qualify as a “clunker” it had to be manufactured after 1985, get less than 18 miles to the gallon, have a title proving ownership and have been continuously registered and insured for a year prior to turning in the car.
The car also had to make it into the parking lot of the dealership you wished to turn it in at. This is to prevent eager individuals from going out and buying a “clunker” and then cashing in. But people with legitimate “clunkers” could not always provide this essential information.
Processing the deals was not an easy task. Most people couldn’t provide proof that their “clunker” was insured for a year prior to turning it in. Others could not provide a year’s worth of registration, while still others could not produce the title to their “clunker.”
Getting proof that the car was registered for the specific amount of time wasn’t too hard. We only needed to call something called Tag Talk and the information was faxed to us rather quickly.
But getting a duplicate title proved troublesome. Our title clerk had to fill out a form, and we had to play the waiting game while Tallahassee processed it. We were also charged a fee for this service, the price of which increased on Monday, giving us a deadline to file the paperwork.
Considering these two documents are essential in proving vehicle ownership, how could someone loose or misplace them? The first thing a cop asks for when you get pulled over is “license and registration.”
Wouldn’t you keep those in a safe place? What if your car was stolen, wouldn’t you need the title to prove that the car was yours if it was found and that you weren’t filing a false report?
The amost troublesome to fix was finding proof of insurance on the “clunkers.”
I spent a week on the phone with various insurance companies asking for the right information. Geico was the most helpful, but most companies were not. Some would not talk to me because I was not the one on the policy.
Yet the car was ours the moment it was traded in. Some said, “I’ll fax that right to you.” I would wait all day and said fax would never come. I had to call three and four times on some to get the information I needed. State Farm was the worst.
They only had the information on the new Hyundai and had no way of accessing the “clunkers” information in their computers. One even said that they couldn’t trust that I was giving them the right VIN information on the “clunker.” Talk about a pain in the neck.
If we could not get the information the costumer failed to provide, the dealership would not be reimbursed by the government for fronting the rebates. That meant the dealership had a lot of money on the line. Halfway through the program, the government also tacked on forms that both the dealership and costumer had to sign.
But I think the thing that bugged me the most was that a lot of these so called “clunkers” weren’t clunkers in my opinion. Some were only about five years old and in pretty decent condition. They were just what some would call a “gas guzzler.” Since they put a maximum age, why not a minimum age of 10 years?
I have a 2005 Mustang that qualifies as a “clunker” under their guidelines. But since I just got done paying it off and it’s in next to new condition, why would I want to turn it in?
They also did not initially hire enough people to review the submitted deals. Thousands of dealerships participated in this program and they only hired 120 people. An estimated 700,000 cars were turned in during the programs two month run. How can 120 people possibly review that many deals in a timely way?
If the government wanted to get older cars and gas guzzlers off the roads, they could have thought of an easier way, one that wasn’t such a pain in the neck for the dealerships. Maybe they should have tried processing one of the deals themselves before putting it into effect. The program is definitely better on paper than in practice. I’d bet good money that by the end of the year, the dealerships that participated will still be trying to get their money.
Melissa Villy can be reached at mvilly@ut.edu.