Reese Auto Tags: Crooks
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH REESE AUTO TAGS. THEY ARE CROOKS.
Last year when whenI bought my van in Mt. Airy, the seller brought me to a nearby auto tags place called Reese Auto Tags (7150 Germantown Avenue, 215-242-8247) to transfer registration, title, and the other necessary documents. For those of you who don’t live in Pennsylvania, the work of registration and titleing is actually farmed out to for-profit businesses, instead of a government agency wehere this kind of work belongs. The result is a patchwork quilt of reputable and disreputable businesses. Unfortunately, Reese Auto Tags, and their on-site notary James J. Conaghan, are the latter.
After paying the fee for document processing (about $100.00, maybe more), Conaghan gave me my temporary plates, and assured me that that tags would arrive in a few months. When the tags didn’t arrive and the temporary plate expired, I went back to the storefront, where Conaghan gave me a new temporary, and a new assurance that the tags would arrive.
When that set of tags didn’t arrive, I called again to get new temporary plates. Then I called again. And again. In the year that followed, I must have called Reese Auto Tags at leats every other month inquiring into my tags and never once got a response. Worse, when I called the state to see if there was a delay on their end, they told me there was no record of my van in their files. To this day, I am driving around on expired tags.
My van goes in for inspection tomorrow, and since I was home from work sick yesterday, I placed one more call to Reese Auto Tags, hanging up in exasperation before the machine clicked on with the same message it’s been giving me since last year. Instead, I called up an auto tags place in my neighborhood. After I explaining my situation to the woman on the other end, she told me “You have to get your title before we can get you started on the procedure, and that’ll cost $115.”
“But I don’t have the title,” I said. “Reese Auto Tags does, and they’ve been ditchign em for a year. How do I get it back?”
“It sounds to me,” she sighed, “like they never processed your paperwork.” Her weary tone indicated she’d been through this story before. “Here’s what you have to do: call the state police.”
“The staties? isn’t that a little, uh drastic?”
“Not at all,” she replied. “It’s the job of the state police to monitor the tags agencies for exactly this kind of nonsense. Leave Reese a message saying that if he doesn’t get you your tags, you’re calling the cops.”
I thanked her for her advice, and redialed Reese Auto Tags. Interestingly, the message had changed to a panicked man with “very little time” told incoming callers to fax their pink temporary registration and insurance cards to Kathy for processing. The words were fast and nervous, and I was imagining an angry mob outside the office with pitchforks and torches trying to batter down the door yelling, “We know you’re in there Conaghan! We want our tags!”
I think he may have gotten nailed by someone else. Just a hunch. I did my fax this morning. If I don’t get my tags damn soon, I’m reporting him to the staties.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH REESE AUTO TAGS. THEY ARE CROOKS.
2 Responses to “Reese Auto Tags: Crooks”
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November 28th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Brendan, there are a bunch of complaints about them on Phillyblog.
November 28th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
I know. I’m one of the people complaining!