Only in Hawaii…

The Department of Motor Vehicles made a Big Boo Boo. They mailed out the automobile registration notices with one amount and a week later sent out a “corrected” renewal notice.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hawaii News Now has learned the vehicle registration renewal mistake is a statewide issue.

The City and County of Honolulu handles renewal notices for the entire state.

Officials say the notices mailed for December have an amount listed that’s too low due to a programming error.

Corrected notices are being sent out and if you don’t pay that higher amount your renewal will be rejected.

*******************************

In the meantime I and I’m sure thousands of others, mailed in their checks to the City and County of Honolulu, along with their required safety checks.

The new corrected amount was $53.10 more than my original registration bill. At first I thought of sending in a check for the difference, but knowing how Hawaii works, I didn’t trust the system to actually add the two checks together.

I tried phoning DMV and got a very bad recording of an island sounding woman reading the hours and addresses of the various offices. There was no way to talk to a real person.

So I drove to our nearby Satellite City Hall in the Ala Moana shopping center. I was dreading this trip for several reasons. First parking is a real problem two weeks before Christmas and second, the line at the City Hall is usually what we call a Disneyland line. It snakes back and forth and the normal wait is about an hour.

This must be my lucky day. I found a parking space very close to where I was headed. Then when I entered the office, to my surprise, there was only one other person ahead of me, and three clerks. I didn’t have to wait two minutes.

So how is the city handling this ‘mixup’? They are mailing back the ‘wrong’ checks and rejecting your new registration until you send in the whole amount. So I wrote a check for the new corrected amount and luckily my safety check was in the system.