Wish me luck!
As it turns out, when you as an Illinois resident buy out your leased vehicle, it creates this complicated and opaque logisitical process between you, your old bank, your new bank, and the state which of course wants its tax revenue.
- You apply for bank loan fron new bank
- New bank issues check for payoff amount
- You mail check to old bank
- Old bank sends confusing letter plus updated title to you, not to new bank, because now you — as a chump who still lives in Illinois for some inexplicable reason — have to hike your sorry self over to the DMV and wait in long lines with a bunch of sweaty disgusting losers for the privilege of writing some sizable check to the State of Illinois for purchasing the vehicle you have already been driving for 4 years
Why couldn’t this be a paper bill so you can mail the check somewhere, and then the state can send the title to the new bank?
You know, like normal, rational, non-insane people would do it?
I don’t know but I suspect it has something to do with the state assuming you will ignore it or defraud them somehow. Which I still don’t get because this genius process:
- Requires me to go somewhere and wait in line, quite a disincentive in itself, *much* worse than just mailing some sizable check that I already don’t want to write, and
- Actually sends *me* the title and while I am not in the business of defrauding the state and courting prison time, there are people who think that is a fine idea — maybe even a business model — and *those* people might view the idea of having the title in their possession as a good start
Like I said, wish me luck. Also: it’s raining.