LTO Woes

I just registered my car at LTO and what a horrific experience that was! It was a far cry from what happened last year, when it took less than four hours for me to get insurance, have emission testing done, and pay the registration fee. I was expecting it to be the same this year but I ended up having to go to LTO twice, losing a day and a half in total. Wow!

DAY 1

I arrived at LTO at 830am. I proceeded to get insurance before heading to the nearest accredited emission testing center which was a short drive away. Unfortunately, when I got there, the guy who inspected my car told me that my car plate light was busted and that I needed to replace it to pass the emission test. I knew there were several car shops a few kilometers away so I drove there, hoping at least one of them was open and would be selling car plate lights. Thankfully, I found one. However, when the person at the store checked my lights, we found out that they were working. Ugh. What a waste of time. I thanked the guy and drove back to the testing center.

Unfortunately, as I was driving back, Waze started acting up badly. I was unfamiliar with the area so I had to rely on Waze and it kept rerouting me. While it took me maybe less than 15 minutes to drive to the car shop, the return trip took almost 45 minutes! By the time I got back, there was already a long line of cars. As such, it took a while for my emission test to be done.

It was around 11:30am when I got back to LTO. By then, I was told I could no longer be accommodated. Apparently, there is only a certain number of people who can be processed each day. I was advised to return a few days later and that I should get there at 7am or earlier. Because I was quite busy, I ended up returning more than a week later.

DAY 2

I followed the advice I was given and arrived at LTO before 7am. Even then, there was already a long queue! I got there before LTO was open so the line didn't move until car registration processing opened at 8am. It was 9:30 when I got to the front of the line and was served.

Problem: I was told that because the car was registered in my mom's name, I needed to present an authorization letter from my mom, along with a photocopy of her valid ID and a photocopy of my own ID. What?! I had never heard of these requirements before! (They certainly didn't require these from me last year.) In retrospect, I should have checked the LTO website for the list of requirements but I didn't expect there to have been changes in this process. Ugh.

I asked the person if I could just show him pictures of the authorization letter and the valid IDs on my phone. He said they required actually physical print-outs. He told me that if I had these in my phone, I could go to one of the print shops around LTO and have them printed there. However, I didn't want to link my phone to a computer at a print shop due to possible mobile phone intrusions or malware. They would also end up having copies of my files that include personally identifiable information which would be a huge privacy risk.

As such, I decided to go back home. I called my mom and asked her to send me an authorization letter and an ID which I then printed out. I didn't have a photocopier at home and I didn't want to be bothered looking for one that was open nearby so I took a photo of my ID and printed it out as well. Once I had everything I needed, I drove back to LTO. It was 12 noon when I arrived. The guy who processed my papers in the morning told me to walk up back to him once I had all the requirements without having to fall in line again so that's what I did. He accommodated me and gave me queue number 80 for the registration fee payment.

I decided to ask the lady who was processing the car registration payments what number was being served. She told me they were only at 56. I did the math: it took 4 hours to process 56 people so I figured it might take 2-3 hours before my number would be called. She told me I could go have lunch and if my number was called and I wasn't there, they would set my papers aside until I got back. I decided to look for a nearby restaurant where I could have lunch. (By then, I had been awake since 6am and still hadn't eaten anything!)

True enough, it was around 3pm when my number was called. They first verified if we were there so that they could confirm which official receipts to print out. They then called our names again, this time to make the payment. It was 3:30pm when I left. Since I got there at 7am, that meant it was a total of 8.5 hours from for time I arrived at LTO until the time I left. Remember that this was already my second trip. So much time lost just to register a car, a process that is done each year!

Considering that everyone has to have an account at the LTO Portal, I was expecting the process to be much faster this year. Instead, it took me significantly longer to finish. At least I now know what to do next year.

On a more positive note, I finally got to resolve the problem with the LTO account I set up last year for the car. Because the vehicle is registered to my mom, I had to create an LTO account using her name last year. However, since she wasn't with me, if I used her email address to create the account, a one-time password would be sent to her and I might not be able to get it fast enough to complete the creation of the account. The LTO tech guy was able to create an account without an email address and he gave me a temporary password. Unfortunately, I forgot to log in within 24 hours to change that password and when I eventually did, the temporary password was no longer valid so I couldn't log in to the account. Because I was in LTO for a few hours this year, I was able to get the tech guy's help to unlock the account and reset the password. For the first time in a year, I can finally access that account. Whew!