Arizona- Registration & License Info Please HELP!

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azpaula

Member
Joined
Mar 13, 2011
Messages
9
Location
Gilbert AZ
I really tried to find if this answer already, so apologies if I missed it...

My dealer called in regards to my purchase on April 29- At the time, I told them I wanted to keep my license plate and put it on the new LEAF. Now they say unless I take the Alternative Fuel license plate (blue with clouds and all good personalizations taken), I have to pay the regular registration costs which will be around $500 (she was estimating, of course).

So, the $70 ish for registration cost with the plate I dont want (HOA lane is not a consideration for me, dont care) or I pay hundreds and hundreds more per year to keep my awesome plate (purple/colorful with "ELCTRC")...

Does anyone really know my options here? I dread calling the DMV tmrw. I thought I had heard tale of an alt fuel sticker? maybe that could be put onto the plate I want to keep?

thanks in advance- hope someone can help me~
 
thx for the reply...

The car is the same whether I have their damn plate or not. The car is what it is... I should get to pay the reduced amount and have the plate I want.

I realize I am probably **** out of luck- just was hoping someone had info on how to work around this.
 
Hi Paula,

I was able to transfer my personalized plate wording from another car to the AF plate by going down to the DMV. They issued a generic plate for the vehicle with the personalized plate wording and a generic AF plate for the LEAF, while the personalized AF plate was ordered. I paid the reduced AF registration fees for the LEAF. If you do not need a plate for the vehicle with the presonalization, I believe you should be able to get a plate credit for the registration remaining on the plate.

Dave
 
Thanks guys... things are not looking good. prolly gonna have to go with AF plate, my personalization is not available, not even close. perhaps I can think of something clever.

Dave- since the paperwork is all being done thru the dealer, should I have them just get a regular AF plate and then try to get a personalized one later? sounds like you did it all from the start of the process and could talk to a DMV person about the personalizing of the plate. thoughts?
 
Hi Paula,

I purchased out of state, so I had to go the DMV to register and title the vehicle in AZ. I would suggest you get get the AF plate at the dealer. I believe the personalization is independent of plate type (unless there is a number of character limitation). So the personalization that is "taken" maybe held by you. If this is the case, after you get the AF plate, you could go down to the DMV (MVD?) and work through getting the personalization that you have (on the other plate) moved to the new plate. (but you will need to keep the registration active on the old plate until you go to the DMV and complete the process).

Dave
 
Hi Paula,

To answer your original question. I do not know the details to use your existing plate on your vehicle. My comments are only on the possible transfering of the "personalization" to the AF plate.
 
thanks guys... gonna play by the rules and do the AF plate- and as discussed above, just try to get my current personalization onto new plate at a future date. Mabe I AM the only one with ELCTRC and since its taken by me on my current plate it is classified as TAKEN across all plate types- that would be nice.

feeling a bit pushed around by "the Man", but all of your input has helped me feel better- like we are all in this together :)
 
Once you receive your generic AF plate in the mail, you can go to servicearizona.com and request a personalized AF plate pretty easily. I'm not sure if they can transfer the personalization from an old plate online or not. I wonder if you register your old plate on the plate refund page, it will free up the personalization to be applied to your new AF plate. I hate having to wait forever at the MVD so I wonder if the online route is possible.
 
I was in a similar situation in which I wanted to transfer my personalized wording from one car to another. I did not see a way to do it on the website, because it indicated that the personalized wording that I wanted was "taken". I was able to do it down at the DMV and do the transfer and order the plate. They issued a generic plate for the vehicle where the "wording" was comming from. If you do no longer need the plate, they can refund you what is left on that registration. (DMV was familar with this type of request). (Hint go to the DMV 15 min or so before it opens and you should be able to get out of there in an hour or so - depending on the line when you get there).
 
Just to add this in there as I would not be at all surprised if dealerships completely messed up the registrations early on. The correct fuel type on the registration and title work needs to be fuel type "X". There is a fuel type "E" also, but this is incorrect, E is for NEV's. The registration cost will be the same if they put fuel type E instead, but it's better to avoid any potential hassle later on.

First year plates should be just a bit over $33. If you go to the DMV they will let you put up to a five year tag on the car since it's emissions exempt.

Also I'm curious if you guys received flat printed plates or the older embossed painted plates. AF plates here historically have a bad reputation for sun fading. The newer printed plates in theory should be much more durable.
 
RickS said:
First year plates should be just a bit over $33. If you go to the DMV they will let you put up to a five year tag on the car since it's emissions exempt. Also I'm curious if you guys received flat printed plates or the older embossed painted plates.

The AF plates, if you have bought the car, are only around $70 for five years. If you lease, you can get a two-year sticker for around $22.
There are no more 'raised' plates as they have switched to all flat characters. I love my 3-D AF plate and plan on using it for my LEAF.
 
Am I the only one with the regular AZ plate, (not alternative fuel) and paid the low fee charged for an electric vehicle? { See my avatar at the left. }

I read the DMV site a year ago and then called and talked to a representative at the AZ DMV and she was very helpful. Since electric vehicles were new to her, she got her supervisor to give me the information I wanted about transferring my regular AZ personalized plate (on my ICE) to the LEAF when it arrived. Last June I got the "LEAF EV" personalized plate for my ICE car to reserve it for my LEAF.

The day before my LEAF arrived I went to the DMV office to get a new plate for my ICE. They "suspended" the personalized plate so it could be used on the LEAf and gave me another plate for my ICE at no charge. The next day I took the personalized plate to the dealer when I picked up the LEAF. They made a photo copy of it and the person in charge of getting the title and registration sent that in to DMV. In a couple weeks the tab and registration came. I stuck on the tab and put on the plate.

I have no need for the HOA lanes since we don't have any in Tucson. I've seen at least one other LEAF in Tucson with regular AZ plates so I don't think the alternative fuel plates are required on electric vehicles.
 
Do not "give up" or cancel your present personalization, or somebody else is likely to "snatch" it.

Yes, I would assume that plate personalization must unique within the state, and not specific to one "style" of plate.

It looks like you can get a generic AF plate initially, and then get either an AF plate personalized with "your" letters, or, possibly even (with special arrangements) use and substitute your old plate.
 
LEAFfan said:
The AF plates, if you have bought the car, are only around $70 for five years. If you lease, you can get a two-year sticker for around $22.
There are no more 'raised' plates as they have switched to all flat characters. I love my 3-D AF plate and plan on using it for my LEAF.


If the plate is ordered it should be flat, but it's possible some DMV offices or some title services may still have left over embossed AF plates since the AF plates are not super common. I've heard of at least one person getting one.

As for leaving a regular plate on a Leaf I'm not aware that you can do this, but I suppose it's possible. By default they send you an AF plate. As long as the fuel type is X it's should be ok.
 
Azrich said:
I've seen at least one other LEAF in Tucson with regular AZ plates so I don't think the alternative fuel plates are required on electric vehicles.

That could be (I believe MVD made a mistake), but I've never seen anything except an AF blue plate here in the Phoenix area on alt fuel cars. If you choose a regular plate here, you will pay full licensing fees and you wouldn't be allowed to use the HOV lanes.
 
Picked up my Leaf from Coulter Nissan yesterday. I paid around $33 or $35 for title and license (can't remember which), but Coulter charged me a surprise fee of their own for $17 to process the title and license for me. I didn't care much for this surprise but I didn't want to make a big deal so I just paid. I wouldn't have minded if they had told me up front. Other than that, everything else went great.
 
Volusiano said:
Picked up my Leaf from Coulter Nissan yesterday. I paid around $33 or $35 for title and license (can't remember which), but Coulter charged me a surprise fee of their own for $17 to process the title and license for me. I didn't care much for this surprise but I didn't want to make a big deal so I just paid. I wouldn't have minded if they had told me up front. Other than that, everything else went great.

Good to see they finally figured out how to calculate the charges. They charged me $584, based on the value of the car rather than how alt fuel vehicles are supposed to be calculated. Even though I pointed out to them at the time that they were wrong. I was trying to be cooperative and I knew I would get a refund so I let it go.

I got a $550 refund a week later. They didn't charge me the $17 process fee and in fact the breakdown sheet they provided with my refund check showed a $4 "service fee" that they also didn't charge me. They already charge a "document preparation fee" so I don't see the need for the other fees.
 
leafkabob said:
Volusiano said:
Picked up my Leaf from Coulter Nissan yesterday. I paid around $33 or $35 for title and license (can't remember which), but Coulter charged me a surprise fee of their own for $17 to process the title and license for me. I didn't care much for this surprise but I didn't want to make a big deal so I just paid. I wouldn't have minded if they had told me up front. Other than that, everything else went great.

Good to see they finally figured out how to calculate the charges. They charged me $584, based on the value of the car rather than how alt fuel vehicles are supposed to be calculated. Even though I pointed out to them at the time that they were wrong. I was trying to be cooperative and I knew I would get a refund so I let it go.

I got a $550 refund a week later. They didn't charge me the $17 process fee and in fact the breakdown sheet they provided with my refund check showed a $4 "service fee" that they also didn't charge me. They already charge a "document preparation fee" so I don't see the need for the other fees.
I know. That's why I wasn't too thrilled because Ryan told me it'd just be the $399 doc fee and title and license and tax and that's it. I totally agree the $17 should have been part of the doc fee. If they must add it in, then tell me the doc fee is $416. It gave me a bad taste in my mouth although it wasn't worth the hassle to argue with them so I didn't.

It's not the end of the story. After telling me title and license was $34, they rang up the bill and title & lic showed up as $622 on the invoice. If I hadn't caught that I would have been short changed a lot of cash. But I caught it and they said Oops, it wasn't supposed to ring up $622 and the system shouldn't have pushed it through, and they fixed it. But how do you not catch a big mistake like that if this is your job and you do it day in day out?

And they were trying pretty hard to sell me the factory extended warranty. 5 years for $1500 more. I told them but that's only 2 years longer than their basic 3 year warranty. They said yeah, but the basic warranty is very minimal and the extended warranty is very comprehensive. I'm like, are you dissing your own basic warranty as being very lacking? Really what's there to cover? there aren't that many parts that can break in the first place and if they do, it'd be under the basic 3 year warranty. But they kept on harping about how lacking their basic warranty is, which makes me laugh but is kind of sad on the other hand because they're willing to make their basic warranty look bad just so they can sell you more warranty.

But Ron and Miguel were great in delivering the vehicle. The only slightly annoying experience is with the finance people in pushing the extended warranty in a bad way and the $17 surprise and the $622 miscalculation.
 
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