Mom On the Alert

Trading Cars

This is how it went:
Thursday, I decided to buy the Jeep that Mike and Michele planned to sell.
The seat of the Jeep is much better on my back than is the seat of the Dodge Caravan that I've been driving.
Martin wants to buy our Dodge before the Diggs move to Kansas.
In order to do that, we had to pay off the lease.
One cannot sell a car one doesn’t own.
And, to sell a car, one needs the pink slip.
The bank that owns the car had to be contacted to get the pay-off amount.
That done, we needed to transfer money from one account to another in order to write the check to pay off the Van.
Pete took care of that.

In order to pay off the lease, both Pete and I had to sign the forms that the Bank had kindly sent by FAX.
Pete was busy this weekend, and forgot to sign the forms before he left for Philadelphia this morning.
Even though he usually handles this kind of stuff, I decided that I certainly am capable of paying off the van, and selling it to Martin.
After all, I am a college graduate!

This morning, I started the process.
It was then that I discovered that Pete had forgotten to sign the forms.
I called the bank.
The nice lady there told me that if I could FAX the forms to Pete, he could sign, and send them back to me.
I could then could add my signature and FAX it back to them.
The only thing left was for me to get the money to the bank.
In return, they would send me the pink slip. OK.

I left a message on Pete’s Cell to call me.
He called me back, when he arrived at the hotel.
I faxed the forms to the hotel.
Pete signed them and faxed them back to me.
I then filled out the rest of the paperwork, after making another call to the bank.
The man I talked with was nice.
However, I learned that the only way this could be taken care of before Martin left town, was to make a wire transfer of the funds.

I talked with people at the Credit Union and the bank regarding this.
Both sent me instructions.
But, since the Credit Union has a separate department to send Faxes, I hadn’t yet received the wire transfer form.
I called them back. I was then instructed how to get the form on the internet.
The nice lady stayed on the phone as I walked upstairs to my computer and connected to their website.
She walked me though the steps to download the form so I could print it out.

I filled out the wire transfer form, needing to call both the bank and the credit union for instructions.
It wasn’t as simple as it seemed at first glance.
Now, I sent the completed forms back to the Credit Union by FAX.
By the time this was finished, it was too late in the day for the wire transfer to be done today.
However, I was told that this transaction would take place by 11:00 AM tomorrow. Good.

Of course, this is trusting that all these transactions will be taken care of tomorrow and I will receive the pink slip to give to Martin by the end of the week.

I learned a few things today.
1. These things are more complicated and time consuming than I realized.
2. Pete makes things look easier than they really are.
3. People are nice when you ask for help.
4. Given enough time, I can learn to do all this myself.
5. You can do almost anything from home now, if you have a computer and are connected to the internet.
6. Somehow, Martin will get the Van before he leaves.

Oh, and nothing much else got done today.
The toy farm and school bus that Mira played with yesterday, are still sitting where she left them.
She and Zoe came along when Mike brought Martin over to test drive the van.

Posted by Judi at June 9, 2003 9:05 PM | TrackBack