perfidy

Not satisfied with taxing you until you bleed, and not returning any noticeably improved service for said tax, the Bay State has engineered the following scam. Here's how it works:

When it's time to renew your registration, you decide to do so online. It's faster, easier, you don't have to deal with surly registry people, and they don't have to deal with the surly public. Everybody wins.

And after a few weeks, then 2 months, pass without a new sticker in the mail, you might begin to wonder what's up. After you get pulled over for having an expired sticker on your plate, you start making some calls.

The registry demands $15 for a new sticker. You explain you've already paid $40-odd online. You show the receipt. The registry will not accept the credit card statement or website receipt as proof of payment. More specifically, they won't accept it as current, because what you are REALLY doing is saying you lost your replacement and are trying to scam a new one on the cheap by saying you never got it. I am not making this up. The registry can do no wrong, only fend off the cheating masses always trying to get over. Then say it's the Postal Service's fault for losing your replacement.

So if you like driving a legal car, you have to pony up the extra $15, in essence to replace the replacement you already paid for online. Renewing online, so quickly and easily, actually costs more in the long run as you ultimately have to pay twice.

The woman this happened to, who I know well, knows other people to whom this has happened. When she asked about it at a registry office, the workerwoman said there are
M A N Y people in the same boat, just within the reach of that little branch alone.

What the Commonwealth is doing is charging people twice for the same service, then blaming the taxpayer or the USPS for it. And that, my friends, is poop.