Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with registration

My speeding citation has turned into a shit snowball.

desjardins — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:19:22 -0800

Please help me navigate a mess involving an expired car registration, a speeding ticket, a lost insurance card, a license held as bond and a omg I can't even think. This involves Illinois and Wisconsin. 1. My car is registered in Illinois and I have an Illinois driver's license. The registration expires today; the license is good for awhile.

2. However, I'm (technically?) a Wisconsin resident, in that I have a lease on an apartment there, but I work in Illinois and sleep half the week in Illinois and the other half in WI. This is meant to be as temporary as humanly possible until I can stay permanently in WI.

3. I did not renew the registration yet because I was planning to get my Wisconsin license & registration this coming Friday, and hopefully avoid getting caught for the next 3 days while it's expired. Before I can register it in IL I have to get an emissions test. Of course, there will now be a late fee.

4. I got stopped for speeding today in a suburb of Chicago, I could not find my insurance card, and so I received another citation for that & my license was taken as bond. My court date is at the end of December. My driving record is otherwise clean.

5. So, I can't register my car in WI or get my WI license until I have my IL license back, correct? It's my understanding that if you have a valid license in another state, you have to forfeit it to get a WI license. I don't know about registering the car.

6. What's the ABSOLUTE CHEAPEST yet legal way to handle this? I am broke, like really broke, and the thought of having to pay to register my car in Illinois and then re-register it in WI when I get my license back is really disheartening.

7. I am freaking out and not thinking clearly, see above about being broke.

What should I do about my lost domain name?

doubtless — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:26:23 -0800

So I lost my domain name. Now what? For a few years, I had a personal blog. Then the super cheap hosting service I used (Vizaweb) suddenly vanished, charging my credit card one more time before becoming a eerie and apparently deserted spam-trap.

My blog disappeared, but the domain continued to be registered to Vizaweb (I hadn't registered it in my own name).

So, I watched patiently over the course of a few months, as the name expired and went into pending deletion, thinking I'd buy it when it came up again. I figured that my very low traffic blog address (not a name that seems very marketable, either) wouldn't be worth anyone's effort to steal.

However today the name apparently became available and someone managed to buy it before I could register it again. Now it is owned by "c/o eNom, Inc. on behalf of eNom, Inc. Customer." It also says, "Expiration Date: 19-nov-2010." I've already visited the site on line (which perhaps was a bad idea?). It's now just a spamy set of links to hotels, ring tones, etc.

So, as I see it, I have 4 options:
1) wait till the name expires next year, then buy it.
2) email the owner and ask to buy it
3) buy the .net version and use that
4) forget about the old domain entirely

However, there are problems with each option:
1) they might renew it
2) he will probably ask a huge price for it, and I'm poor. I'm also not sure if, on principle, I'd want to pay more than maybe $50 to this domain name squatter
3) this would be ok, but .com is better known, and would probably encourage the new owner to renew the domain next year and/or to charge more for it if I ask him to sell it
4) this will really annoy me, as the name has some personal importance. But it is an option.

Anyway, I know that there's no great solution here, but I guess I'd be interested in what you'd recommend. (As a secondary question, how could I have avoided this? How could I have reserved the name that was held by my defunct hosting company?)

Thanks for any advice.

How to drive home a car bought in another state?

HopperFan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:01:41 -0800

So I bought a car from out of state...please help me with the logistics! I bought a Volvo on eBay for a good price, yay. It's about 6 hours away, though. (Ohio to Virginia)

I've read this question, and this, this, and several others - but I still have questions, because there seems to be some conflicting information.

Step 1 : Insure vehicle. I'll be doing that tomorrow, I have the VIN.

Step 2 : Go to Virginia, meet seller with car. Make sure VIN on car and title matches with what was posted on eBay.

Step 3-4-.... : ?

The questions I've thought of so far are:

1. Does the seller need to have access to a notary? Otherwise, how would signing the back of the title and the bill of sale be valid?

2. Is it true that with a signed over title and a bill of sale, I could drive this vehicle back to Ohio and placate any police officers that happen to stop me?

3. It seems like a very bad idea to fedex payment down without a title in hand, trusting he'll send me the title in exchange, just so that I could obtain temp tags here before driving down. He hasn't asked me to do that, anyway.

The car does not currently have plates. I checked auto shipping companies, but the cheapest quote is around $300. This may or may not be worth it, depending on what I learn about this registration process.

How ofter is my car going to get towed?

T.D. Strange — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:12:22 -0800

I just moved to Northern Virginia for a new job- how likely is it that my car with out of state plates will be ticketed or towed? The Virginia inspection law seems very onerous, and I've read horror stories of shady towing companies towing cars without inspection stickers from apartment parking lots even with valid parking passes. My car is registered out of state under my Dad's name and currently has a broken right front turn signal, so it certainly won't pass any kind of inspection at present.

I'm currently renting a room in a residential area about 90mins outside of DC and commuting in towards the city on a daily basis. I haven't had any problems yet and don't expect to get towed from the garage under my office building, but I plan on finding an apartment in one of the NoVa suburbs after the new year and I'm more concerned.

Assuming that I fix the turn signal, how likely is it that I will have problems driving my car around on a regular basis with out of state plates? I REALLY don't want to move into the city and walk out for work one morning to find my car towed by some shady towing company, so I'd like to give them a few reasons as possible.

How can I change to company Y for domain registration and hosting when I can't contact unreliable original company X?

Not Supplied — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:00:15 -0800

How can I change to company Y for domain registration and hosting when I can't contact unreliable original company X to do the change? In the UK. My friend has had domain hosting for a long time from this sketchy guy. He's never available to contact. I've been emailing him and phoning him for 2 weeks.

I am listed as the registrant and administrative contact for the domain names, but all the contact details are the dodgy hosting company.

Seems like he keeps his customers by just making it so bloody hard to switch to another company.

I've spoken to someone from godaddy.com about the process of switching both the domain name registration and the hosting to them. I'm not attached to using them but they seem cheap and ok for my friend.

Anyway they said I need to ask dodgy domain host guy to 1) unlock the domain 2) Change the administrative email to my address.

It seems fairly likely that this guy will stall and be uncooperative when I do finally get in touch so I'm not sure how to handle it. I'm thinking of writing a letter recorded delivery asking for the changes to be made. If I do this what articles of consumer law can I quote to back up our right to have him make the changes?

Is there another way of switching the domain registration and hosting without having to get the previous comanies approval?

How do you easily remove old accumulated registration stickers from a license plate?

pantufla_milagrosa — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:42:45 -0800

How do you easily remove old accumulated registration stickers from a license plate? You know, how every time you get a new sticker, you're supposed to remove the old one before sticking the new one? Except you never do because it's easy to just put it on top of the old one. Suppose that I wanted to remove all the old ones. What's a good trick for that? Last time I tried it seemed very hard. There must be around 15 of them piled up by now.

Out of state used car headache

zvs — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:44:26 -0800

I'm looking into buying a used car, and found a pretty good looking one from a colleague in New Jersey. I live in Brooklyn. How the heck does this work? Parking and title questions follow... I've never bought a car before, so it's all new to me. If I buy this car, the original owner has to take the plates off -- then I guess I'll need a NY in-state temporary plate to get it to my house.

Problem 1: Do I just leave it in NJ until I manage to get NY plates? Do I have to get title to get a transfer plate, or does that include title? The website is less than clear.

Problem 2: Where the heck do I keep it? Will I get ticketed if it's on the street? Will I get ticketed for moving an unplated car during street cleaning?

Problem 3: Where do I pay sales tax?

Anybody done this before?

Turn on, tune in, log out?

telegraph — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:27:55 -0800

Webdev filter: What tools can I use to avoid developing a registration/log-in feature from scratch? I'm an amateur web developer -- I took a few programming classes in college (Java), know HTML and CSS pretty well, and can get by in PHP and SQL, albeit while checking references constantly. I'm trying to build what I think should be a pretty simple web application: the nuts and bolts of it are that it should allow member registration and login/out, and while the user is logged in, s/he can input numerical data, as well as view some statistical juggling of that data.

The data entry bit I feel fairly confident that I can do using PHP/MySQL. I've written a rudimentary registration and login system (with an email confirmation message, etc), but I can tell that it needs a lot more features and even though I am mostly n00b I can think of ways it could be compromised -- if at all possible I'd prefer to just use code that is already written and known to be fairly stable.

Is there a pre-built, standard kind of thing (I don't even know what the proper word to call it is) I can use for this? I think that Ruby on Rails could be used here, but my attempts at teaching myself how to use it have been kind of futile, and I don't really need all of the version control and other features like that. I'd like to keep this really really simple, at least for now.

As you can see I'm not very experienced and don't really know the proper terms are, so let me know if I need to clarify anything. While I'd like to learn other languages in the future, my goal is to get this thing up and running so I'd prefer advice that presupposes PHP use as opposed to telling me to go learn Python (though I guess I understand if that's the only option). Thanks.

Expired Registration Question.. looking for advice:

sandmanwv — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:21:02 -0800

What is the likelihood for being pulled over in a faraway state for expired tags and what are typical penalties? It would be one month overdue if that changes both answers. I went out of the country for three months and in the middle of the trip realized that my car registration would be set to expire 2/3rds the way through.

I am in the midst of a move from one state to the other (IL to NC); I will be registering my car there as soon as I arrive. But I have to drive through three states (and around 10 hours of driving) to get to NC. (My car is parked in Northern Virginia.. the states would be WV, VA and NC).

I see my four options:

A)When I visit IL (with another car), pay the $100 to re-register my car for 2 weeks. This would simply require me to come with the renewal and pay and I get a sticker.

B)Register my car in VA. This would require me to retitle my car and get it inspected. Total cost ~$80, though I could get ticketed on the 1/4 mile ride to the station. When I get to NC, simply retitle and reregister car there. Would this be viewed with suspicion by NC DMV?

C)Illegal: drive car as is to NC, hopefully not get stopped; if stopped, explain situation, expect the worst, hope for a warning.

D) Other less savory options?

Really I'm analyzing my risk. $100 seems to be steep to pay for a couple weeks of registration-- but a $150 fine is worse. Impoundment is even worse. But what are those chances?

Note: let me know if this past the bounds of the forum and I apologize if so.

do I have to fundraise money to run in a race?

esolo — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:48:11 -0800

do I have to fundraise money to run in a race? I have started running, and would to run in more races. However, it seems that all the races are centered around fundraising. What is up with that and do I have to do it? I just want to pay my registration fee, show up and run. Can I do that?

Help us transfer our plates!

PhoBWanKenobi — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:19:24 -0800

Florida DMVFilter: what's the easiest (and cheapest) way to register Mr. WanKenobi's car in the state of Florida? Mr. WanKenobi just moved in. Yay! He brings with him a nice, newish RAV4, which he owns outright and is currently registered in the state of NJ.

Since I hardly use my own car, which is registered in Florida, and since we certainly don't need two cars, I've just sold it on craigslist. I have the plates and all of that.

Now we're trying to figure out the best way to register Mr. WanKenobi's car. I would just send him over to get his own plates, but the state of Florida charges you an extra hundred bucks the first time you register any vehicle in the state, whereas transferring the plates would only be four dollars. We have no problem sharing the ownership of the car--we'll both be using it, after all--but I can't find anything on the website about transferring the title to a new co-owner, if that makes any sense. Do any of your Florida mefites have any experience with this? We'd like to avoid paying that hundred dollar "initial registration fee" again if at all possible!

Car insurance coverage with expired tabs

mcstayinskool — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:30:27 -0800

Will car insurance still cover a car with expired tabs? asking this for a friend:

Am I covered by my car insurance if I drive with expired tabs? I recently moved from WA to MN. In the process my vehicle tabs expired and my vehicle title was lost. I can't re-register in WA because I don't have an address there. I can't register in MN because I haven't received the replacement title yet. I realize that by driving the vehicle I am risking a fine for tabs, but if I get in an accident will my insurance still cover me?

Keep my registration sticker where it belongs

oinopaponton — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:24:22 -0800

Foolproof way to prevent registration sticker theft? I recently visited some friends in the city, and at some point during the night my car's registration sticker (on my license plate) was stolen. I found a $40 ticket on my windshield the next morning for an expired registration. Fun.

The DMV's sending me a new sticker, and I'm appealing the ticket. No big deal for now, but I really don't want to have to deal with this more than once. I'll definitely be parking in this area again, and street parking is the only option. Has anyone come up with any good ways to make sure your registration sticker stays where it is? Clear packing tape? Some additional adhesive? Thanks!

How do I get my vehicle situation back in order?

Anonymous — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:14:24 -0800

I have been very negligent with my car situation, and bad things have piled up. How do I get myself back to having an operational car and the legal right to drive it? I moved from Illinois to California a couple years back to be with my girlfriend (who has a car of her own). We barely ever used my car, so I didn't really keep on top of the paperwork for it. Never got my car registered here, and the Illinois registration expired, eh, probably a year and a half ago. More recently (end of last year) my Illinois driver's license expired and I haven't gotten that renewed either. Some time early this year, I started a half-hearted attempt to register my car, and got a state emissions inspection. Then, about a week later, someone broke into my car and stole the contents of my glove box, which among other things contained the little box I had in it with my insurance card and old IL registration cards. That discouraged me from getting CA registration because I knew that they'd want my old IL registration; I still haven't gotten the registration stuff replaced and I don't really know how. (I have current insurance cards though.)

Meanwhile, I haven't driven the car more than a couple blocks at a time in a year; and as of last week I hadn't driven it at all in probably a couple months. I needed to move it and discovered that (a) my battery was dead and (b) it maybe 1 gallon of gas or less in the tank. I jumped it, but didn't let it run the requisite 30 minutes due to fears of running out of gas, and sure enough the battery died again and the car won't start.

So that's where I am now: I have an expired out-of-state license and an expired out-of-state registration for a car that I'm missing important paperwork for and that won't even start. I could jump it, but I'm worried I'd get pulled over on the way to the gas station, or that the car wouldn't start after I bought gas. I don't really know how to deal with any of these problems, much less all of them at once, and I feel incredibly guilty about letting things get so bad. I really just need some advice on how to start digging my way out of this hole. Can anyone help?

Oh, Ohio, Why-o must you be so bureaucratic?

cachondeo45 — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:33:41 -0800

Ohio BMV Bureaucracy filter: I have a Texas driver's license. I recently moved to Ohio and didn't have a car and didn't bother to get an Ohio license. A friend of mine gave me her old car, took the plates (for her new car), and left me the title. Please explain this MESSY bureaucracy! In more detail:
- I need an Ohio driver's license, have a passport and birth certificate. I was informed that I also need to take the written test. Not a problem, except that I don't think I should drive a plate-less car to take the test. And since I have passport and birth certificate, as well as the Texas license, do I really need something with my SSN on it?

-I have a car with no plates. I need to transfer the title into my name, get the inspection, and register the car in my name. Right now I think I risk it getting towed because it has no plates and is parked on a public street. Is there a simple way to get temp plates without going through all the red tape or is it even worth the bother?

HOW IN SAM TARNATION do I get these things done without a vehicle? And in what order? And if you're familiar with Cleveland, where's the best place to go? Is there a one-stop shopping area that has License Bureau, Clerk of Courts, and inspection in the same place?

I already went here and a few other places, but nothing clearly states the order of things and how and where to go. Help me cut this red tape!

As an expat, should I register with the Canadian govt?

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:52:11 -0800

I'm a Canadian (Ontario) citizen, currently living in Eastern Europe. I usually "register" with the Canadian govt. each time I live abroad, just because, well, you never know what might happen. But this time, I have a couple questions: 1. I do not have a work permit for the country I am living in. I do visaruns every time my tourist visa expires. Will the Canadian govt. share my regstration info with my host country? (I've read the privacy policy, and they *can*, in case of criminal/terrorist activities, or if I was kidnapped, etc.. but I specifically mean, do they hand over a list and say "Hey [country], these Canadians say they're in your country for the next year")

2. Will they send a call over to the OHIP offices? OHIP gets temp. canceled once you've been out of the country for more than 152 days or so, and it takes 3 months upon your return to get it reinstated. I just want to know if the folks at OHIP will know I'm gone, because of registering.

I'm just trying to weight the consequences of the decision, either way. Any advice or knowledge would be awesome. Thanks, mefites!

BTW, here's the link to the "Registration of citizen's traveling abroad" that I'm talking about.

How do I identify a company that develops online registration/scheduling software?

ewiley28 — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:09:11 -0800

How can I identify software for online registration for soccer training sessions? I'm thinking there are some solutions out there that are basically blackbox that can then be tailored to my site, but I haven't been able to turn them up. I don't want to use just something like regonline.com because I have people signing up for each session and there are dozens of different sessions in a week. I've seen a couple of software programs on website that look like they could work, but I wasn't able to find any information on the development of any of these, so I don't know if they are in-house software or if they are some sort of commercially available product.

Ideally, I would like to be able to show initially two months (current and next) when a person signs in with the date clickable if there are spaces available for them to register that day. Then, by clicking on the date, it would show the specific sessions available. There are 8 sessions most days and can be up to 8 individuals in a session, but the software would need to be able to note when 8 had been met and show that session as not available.

So, how do I go about identify a product that can be used to provide this type of service? I'm thinking that it's probably something that will need some development/tailoring to make fit my needs, but I'm guessing the company that has developed something like this would be designed to handle that.

Where can/should I register my car?

Maia — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:18:19 -0800

From Washington state, but going to college in Massachusetts. What state should I register the car I just bought? I bought the car in Mass, and am currently there. However, it looks like I need a Mass driver's license to register the car here. Also, it probably doesn't make sense to register the car here since I am leaving as soon as I graduate.

However, if I want to register the car in Washington, it needs to be notarized in Washington state or done in person at a DoL office.

What to do? I want to be able to drive as soon as possible!

Should I renew my TLD?

quidividi — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:41:01 -0800

Internet Domain Filter: In 2000, I started a company (Company A) and registered a matching top-level domain. In 2005, I converted Company A into a holding company, and started a second company, which is now the operating vehicle for our consulting business. The domain registration for Company A will soon expire. Is there any point maintaining the registration? The domain name won't have a high resale value and I'm not planning on resurrecting Company A as a public business. Is there anything I'm missing?

Quest for Car Legality

lazaruslong — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:34:23 -0800

Please guide me through several steps for registering a car and related inspections / et cetera, in North Carolina. Bonus points if you can phrase the instructions in the form of a World of Warcraft quest. I need to take care of the following matters, and I am totally ignorant on the workings of the DMV system. I imagine that fulfilling some objectives have pre-requisites involving other objectives, perhaps fulfilled at other locations, so I need both logistical and chronological help. I am notoriously bad at these sorts of things, so phrasing it in the fashion of a quest from World of Warcraft would be plus a million points.

The objectives:

Get a NC driver's license. Current license is valid and clean, from South Carolina.

Register my recently purchased vehicle and get new tags. Current tags and registration are 4 months expired.

Insure the vehicle, and find out whether said insurance is legally mandated like it is in SC or not.

Have my vehicle inspected.

Do I need to switch my license over before registering a vehicle? Is proof of insurance required for registering? When does the inspection need to be done, or is it a totally separate thing?

Thanks very much to any help, in WoW form or not.

Seeking Web-based system for managing course registrations

tomwheeler — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 08:26:02 -0800

I'm looking for recommendations on a Web-based system for managing class registrations, preferably one that's open source. A friend works in the training department of a large company which offers internal classes to its employees. They contracted with a commercial vendor to supply a Web-based system that lets administrators add course descriptions, class schedules and allows employees to sign up for these classes. The administrators can also print rosters of those who've signed up for the class.

While the commercial software has all the features they need, it's not able to handle the load. With as few as 20 simultaneous users, administrators report that it takes up to 10 minutes to get a confirmation page after submitting a form. IT staff at my friend's company verified that the problem is in the application, but the vendor is unresponsive about fixing it so my friend asked if I knew of any alternatives (which I don't).

They'll undoubtedly want to make at least some minor customizations, so open source is preferable. I don't think the platform or database system it uses matters much; it's a big enough company that they have at least one of everything anyway and an IT staff with skills diverse enough to install and customize it.

I looked through sourceforge.net, but did not find any obvious winner. Does the hivemind know of a good system for this, or better yet, have a recommendation based on first-hand experience?

Where is the best place to register a .cz domain name?

bottlebrushtree — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:00:01 -0800

Where is the best/safest/cheapest place to register a .cz (Czech) domain name? I've searched google but am a little paranoid about what is the "official" place to do so is and what the true costs are.

I've seen domain.cz (EU12.50/year) which seems to be cheap, and also eurodns.com (EU50.00/year) which claims to be the official .cz registrar (and tons of others that seem a bit fly by night).

I live in the US if that matters.

Can I check if I'm still registered to vote or do I need to register again?

eatcake — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:54:28 -0800

So I registered to vote in MA in 2004 but I've moved a few times since then. Can I check if I'm still registered or do I need to register again? I've searched online for about 2 hours now but I can't find any information on how I can check whether I'm still registered.

Now....I know I can re-register with my new address, but I'm wondering (assuming my registration is still good) if I can just leave it be and go to my old town (where I was living in 2004) in November 2008 and cast my vote there.

The only piece of information I was able to come up with is the main telephone number for the town hall of where I used to live, so I can call them also but I don't want to go bouncing around from department to department until I may or may not reach the right person.

car registation nightmare

MillMan — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:37:57 -0800

Help me get my car registered in the state of California. I am at a loss. Here is the history:

Car was purchased new in the state of Minnesota.

Car loan was paid off while living in Massachusetts.

I now live in California, and am attempting to register the car here. The title was lost in the move (and I can't remember which state was listed on the title). According to the DMV here in CA the car can't be registered here without the title (if someone knows that to be false, let me know).

I applied for a duplicate title from the state of MA. They mailed the request back, saying "[loan company] must release the title." I called the loan company, and they said "all we can do is send you the lien release." I received that, but a rep from the state of MA on the phone still says the loan company has to "release" the title. I can't get anything beyond this conflicting info. Anyone have an idea of what to do here?

Save my client from building an Internet ghost town

centerweight — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:26:42 -0800

How frequently do users of community-based sites abandon their registration attempt? And how does that correspond to how painful we make the registration process? I'm working on an e-commerce application for a cool little company. Their products serve a fairly passionate audience, so we thought it would be great to let users rate products and write reviews, a'la Amazon. My client is trying to force people to fill out a long registration page and validate the users email before they can participate. I'm worried that this will deter users from participating in the first place and suggested we either trim down the registration process or let them log in with their Facebook ID (via Facebook Connect). The client seems hesitant because then they won't "...own the user's data." Sigh. They guy responds well to arguments based on statistical data. I know from anecdotal experience that the more painless you can make registration, the greater your community will grow. Does anyone have some sort of web marketing statistic or hard data that would help bolster my case?