Me: “What’ll it take to get YOU to take this car off my hands?!”
Carlos: “A boat, a plane, PoA, a fake addie, a thousand clams.” Me: “Damn…”
“So, you’re telling me I’m stuck with a car that’s going to be stuck on this ----- island, even though I’ll be long gone??”
I couldn’t believe what the customer service rep from Honda Financial was telling me: I had a big problem, and there wasn’t any solution that could save my bacon.
“Unfortunately, sir, that is correct. You signed a 3-year lease, and it’s only been 2 years, so you’ll need to make 13 more payments before Pacific Honda will take the car back,” she kindly informed me, confirming my worst fears.
“Let’s see…with a monthly payment of about $500…jeez, that’s about $6500 that we don’t have! Have we no other options?” I asked desperately. “Can we transfer the lease to somebody else at least?”
“No sir, the lease is non-transferable,” she replied.
“Seriously, though? Your company has never ran into this problem before? You finance cars that are, by default, going to be stuck in Hawai’i, and you don’t have any mechanism for the indubitable plethora of people who end up having to move away before there lease is up?”
I was simply aghast that they had no way out for folk like me. I mean, when we had signed that 3-year lease 2 years earlier, we were fresh off the boat from the mainland, and had sincerely expected to spend at least the next 3 years in Honolulu while I settled into my first real job as a doctor at the local hospital.
(Quick side bar: let me rephrase that last sentence, because upon re-reading, while 100% accurate, is incredibly misleading. I had just obtained my doctorate degree in physics, and had landed a post-doc job with the University of Hawai’i doing MRI research. And though I worked for the University of Hawai’i…
((Uh-oh! Another side-side bar: I didn’t technically work for the University of Hawai’i, I worked for ‘the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai’i, which, in spirit, was meant to reduce the red tape that normally comes with working for a state university for those that didn’t necessarily serve any academic function. Ironically, it had the exact opposite effect, and my colleagues and I would often joke that what was really needed was yet another literal ‘shell corporation’: the Research Corporation of the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai’i. Either way, it made for an incredible headache for any situation, whether legal or casual, where we had to answer the question ‘where do you work/who do you work for?’ End of side-side bar))
Anyways, UH wasn’t exactly teeming with their own MRI machines, so it made sense that the MRI research lab be located in the annex at Queen’s Hospital, where we could offset costs by pausing our research activities to scan actual hospital patients at pre-appointed times on certain mornings. All that to say, yes, I was technically a doctor, and I was technically working in a hospital, but 1) I’m not that kind of doctor, 2) those two facts had almost nothing to do with each other, and 3) I definitely wasn’t making the salary you would have expected upon hearing me uttering the original sentence in question. End of side bar)
Whew! It was way too early in the story for such a digression, so I must profusely apologize–however, you will soon see how such a parenthetical phrase (one that even contained it’s own child parenthetical phrase–and thus putting the parent in parenthetical–no less) is pretty on-brand for the theme of this week’s little dissertation of mine.
*Ahem*
As I was saying, we had originally not thought twice about signing a 3-year lease when we moved to Hawai’i, and I don’t even think they offered a shorter lease option. But that all changed when a little over a year into our island adventure we got pregnant with The Elder (our oldest daughter, if you hadn’t already jumped to that correct conclusion), and upon her birth, soon realized that being half a Pacific Ocean plus a full continent away from family was not going to be an option. Especially when she was going to be my in-laws first grandchild altogether!
So we found ourselves with what should have been the trivial task of selling our vehicle before moving back to North Carolina. After all, it didn’t make much sense to spend $4k-$6k to ship back a car that we would have to continue to make $500/month payments on, right? And then, once the lease was up, we would have to buy out the remainder of what was owed on the car. It’s not like we would spend another $4k-$6k just to ship it back to the dealer in Hawai’i, right?
In the midst of trying to come up with a solution, I had even tried to convince one of my co-workers who had had his car stolen (again–it’s surprisingly common on Oahu), that he could take our car, and we would split the payments until the lease was up. While that arrangement was slightly fraught, paying $3k and helping a friend out was actually not the worst option, given our situation…
“Well, technically you could sell the car…”
Wait, what? What’s that the Honda Financial rep just said?!? I about tripped and fell off the top of the parking garage across from the hospital, the only place at work where I could get good enough reception to make the call in the first place.
“Ok, cool, I can just sell the car. Why didn’t you just say that to begin with?”
Dead silence.
“Hello, Honda Financial rep? Are you still there?” I thought my 1 hour, 13 minute call (thus far) had been inconveniently disconnected, and I would have to start this nonsense all over again.
“I’m here, sir,” replied the voice on the other end of the line. “It’s just…uh…it’s not exactly a so-called ‘straight-forward process’, so we only tell customers about it once they’ve exhausted all other options.”
“Well, I would say that all our options are tired and exhausted. Why don’ you go ahead and walk me through the process?”
“Ok, then, if you insist,” she replied hesitantly. “In order to sell the car, you have to legally own the car.”
“Yeah, that part makes sense, I guess. How do I go about doing that?”
“Well, in order to legally own the car, you need to buy the car.”
“Wait, so I have to buy my own car, then sell it? That seems a little Twilight-Zonish. Whatever. I hate to ask this, but how do I go about buying it?”
“You have to pay off the remaining balance, which is…oh, okay, looks to be a little over $17,000.”
“What the hell? I don’t have $17k just sitting around!”
“Well, sir, the balance owed on the car needs to be paid off, and then Honda Financial will send you the title, which then can be transferred to the new owner,” she advised.
“Arghh. Some ‘solution’ this is. Thanks for nothing,” I bemoaned, lamenting my sorry situation.
“Maybe not all hope is lost yet, sir. What people typically do is have the new buyer send the money straight to Honda Financial instead of paying the seller.”
“Oh. Ok. So I just have to convince some poor sap to send a huge check to pay off a car in my name, trusting that I’ll be gracious enough to give them the title once I get it. No, this doesn’t have ‘sketchy’ written all over it…”
“Dang it, it’s Carlos II texting me again. That dude keeps trying to low-ball us.”
My Beautiful Bride and I were trying to get in one last hurrah on Oahu’s North Shore,1Or perhaps it was the one time that summer I took our nanny, aka my mother, up there? and our moment of Zen was being interrupted by a text that simply stated ‘would you take $15.5 for the Accord?’
Now given that we owed $17k on the car, I had been posting it on Craigslist for $18k, hoping to make a little extra cash for the move, ya know? But this dude, who, for some reason was (and still is, lol) in my phone as ‘Carlos II’–if I recall correctly, the only other person who had shown interest in buying it was also named Carlos–had originally only wanted to pay $15k even. I had almost laughed at his first offer, but after almost 3 weeks of trying to off-load this incredible financial burden, I was starting to realize that we might be looking at taking a loss to the tune of a couple thousand smackers, instead of coming out in the positive.
Given that Carlos II was interested enough to text me again, and offer slightly more in the process, gave me a glimmer of hope of actually at least selling it.
“Well, that’s still a little low. Could you do $16.5?” I texted back. I think I could live with losing only $500 to be done with the whole fiasco.
Not too much later I got a reply back:
“Can’t go all the way up to $16.5. Still need to spend about $400-500 to ship it to Maui. I can do $16k, though. Final offer.”
Dammit. Ok, fine, whatever. But I would need the Boss Lady’s approval.
“Hey, babe, it looks like our best and only real offer for this ol’ hunk of metal is $16k. That’s still a thousand short of–“
I didn’t even get to finish the sentence.
“Don’t be a damned fool! Take his offer and be done with it! We have less than 2 weeks to get rid of it, and you think something better is going to come along?!?”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right…”
“How soon can he meet you to seal the deal?”
“Um…good question. Oddly enough, he mentioned something about having to ship the car to Maui. Now he tells us he’s not even on the same ----- island??”
“He inconveniently just happens to live on Maui? Nooooo, that doesn’t sound sketchy at all…”
“Ok, Carlos II, you’re plot twist was that you live on Maui. Well, we have a little plot twist for you,” I said, but not in those blunt of terms.
“Um, ok…” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“We don’t actually own the car yet, we gotta buy out the lease first. So here’s what’s gonna happen. Whenever you fly your ass on over here to Oahu to get the car and put it on the boat to Maui, you and I are going to go…”
*approximately 5 minutes of indiscernible mutterings*
“…okay, I’ll need to send an email to myself with all those logistical details, so I can also send it you. Sound good, Carlos II?”
“Well, I don’t know if it sounds ‘good’. It sounds a little sketchy to me, honestly, but you sound like an honest guy, and it is a pretty good deal for a 2011 Accord…let’s just say it sounds ‘good enough’, yeah?”
For you, Dear Reader (or technically ‘for your reference’), here is a screen shot of the actual email that I had to send to myself just to make sure the multi-phase plan went off without a hitch. I mean, one little mis-step, and the whole thing could blow up (one thing you can’t see in the screenshot is the date of the email, which was only 6 days before we were leaving the island for good!).
So, basically what would happen is that I would pick his car-buying-and-shipping ass up at HNL and chauffeur him to a local branch of his bank, wherein he could get a money order for $16,000, and we could also get free notary services for the 3 or 4 forms also listed there. We would then walk or drive ~5 city blocks to the post office, where it would be shipped in the most official manner you can buy. The next step would be to go the port where the car would be loaded on the Maui-bound boat. I think it’s implied by this point My Beautiful Bride had joined us in our remaining vehicle, lol. After that, we take him back to the airport, and she takes me back to work. Like I said, very straight-forward.
A few days later, I drove our beloved Accord to work one last time (*sniff!*), and cut out over lunch to enact our not-complicated-in-the-least plan.
Fortunately, it all went as smoothly as one could hope, though I recall having a little trouble finding either the bank or the post office…
“So, this is good-bye?” I said to our Accord later on, after safely loading it on the boat.
My hand lingered on the side of it as I walked away from it one last time, on my way to meet Carlos II who had come from the shipping office to meet up with me.
“Hey man, is that a scratch on the trunk?!?” he said, pointing at the tiniest of blemishes.
Ah, hell, nah. Not today Satan, not today.
“Dude, it’s too late for that non-sense. It’s not like either of us can back out of the deal now, even if we wanted to. Besides, even I had no clue it was there. I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”
“Ugh. Fine. Okay.”
“Now let’s hop in the car and get your butt on a plane back to Maui.”
“Yeah, let’s get our of here. It sure will be nice to be done with The World’s Most Straight-Forward Transaction Ever.”
“Well, almost done,” I begrudgingly corrected him.
“Ah, right…almost…”
“Alright, it looks like we’re almost done with the approval stage of your mortgage application, sir…”
“Wonderful!” I prematurely interjected, interrupting our mortgage agent.
“I said almost done. Oh, we’re not quite to the ‘wonderful!’ stage just yet, though.”
“Oh. Ok. What’s up?”
“There seems to be a few discrepancies that came up on your credit report and other records that threw some red flags. We’ll need you to submit a Letter of Explanation for the following: 1) In 8/2011, your address shows up as 1356 Lusitana St., 7th Floor, Honolulu…”
“Oh, that. Right. When we moved to Hawaii, it was almost a month in between our old permanent address and our new one there. I had to have a valid address on file in order to be able to use my credit cards, so I had to use the mailing address of my new job. Awkward, I know.”
“Um, yeah, sounds sketchy. But, you don’t have to convince me. Save it for the Letter of Explanation.”
“No, I was just saying…ya know…there’s a reasonable explanation and what-not…”
“Anyways, what is much more concerning is that in 9/2013, our records indicate you were living in…Maui?”
“Maui?!? I’ve never even been to Maui!”
“Yup. That red flag seems justified, now doesn’t it?”
“Oh, wait, I remember now! I sold a car to some guy named Carlos II and…well, nevermind. I’ll save it for the letter.”
“They guy’s name is actually ‘Carlos II’? Are you just making up names of fake Hawaiian kings? Nooooo, that doesn’t sound sketchy at all…”
The point of the story is…well, more accurately, the rest of the story is that Carlos II and I had one last logistical hurdle to jump over after our grand romantic day spent together: how to get the lease into his hands, and how to subsequently get it into his name.
Remember all those forms that I had listed that needed notarizing? Well, most of them were tackling this problem. Irregardless of how he got the physical copy of the title, we wouldn’t be around to sign it over to him–thus, we had to give that fool Power of Attorney for us. But it solved that problem at least.
And getting it to him? Well, he wasn’t patient enough for us to get it in NC, and then mail it 1/4 of the way back across the planet to him in Maui. And we had already stretched the amount of trust he could put in a stranger–case in point: the very last thing he said to me before I dropped him off at the airport? And I quote, “this all seemed so suspicious, I almost wasn’t going to show up…”
I needed to do him as much of a solid as I could, so I called up Honda Financial, and had them change my address on file to Carlos II’s. Then, once Carlos II’s $16k cashier’s check, along with our $1,203.79 cashier’s check, were both received and deposited, they would send the title to “me” in Maui, where he could use the POA we had signed to be “me” and at long last sign the deed over to his self.
…and now you know, Dear Reader, why the credit world thinks that we suspiciously lived in Maui for only a month. Of course, I had to proceed to try to state this succinctly and honest-sounding as I could for the mortgage people. That was no easy task.
But really the point of the story is, as you can clearly see, despite the incredibly overly-complicated explanation I have to give–yet another asterisk in my life, just like Lloyd P. Fletcher, et al–I promise you, hand on my heart, I am not a crook.
I swear, I’m not guilty of #Identity #Fraud.
Well, at least not this time around…
Content created on: 2 February 2025 (Saturday)
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