Sigh

I guess it was pretty naive of me to assume that the DMV employee knew more about DMV regulations than the AAA employees.

I did drag the kids to AAA. Four employees, a supervisor, and another call to Sacramento confirmed what we had initially been told: Because the vehicles were registered out-of-state, we do have to go through the whole process anew.

The trip was not for naught, though. The very kind (and efficient, and knowledgeable) AAA people felt very bad for me and gave me forms to fill out to request a partial refund from DMV since we have, essentially, double-paid a good portion of our registration. They said to include a detailed letter and to be prepared to wait months for a response. I'm not optimistic about what that response will be, but I do write damn good letters, so we'll see.

Also, I did find the verbiage on our Texas registration that shows we did not transfer title. So the AAA woman was able to take that, do the VIN inspection, complete our application, and issue our new California registration and license plates for the Pilot.

In all the confusion I forgot to ask how I go about actually canceling (again) our old California registration--or if I even need to now that there's a new one associated with that VIN number--but that's a battle for next week. I'm taking the rest of this week off.