The White Subaru Hell Loop
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Hey, listers, this pj here in surge in, didn't we're gaining the bottom of questions that require a lot of digging? Find their answers. Another podcast is created. This and that I think you'll love is the ted AI show with the laval to do A I consider seem like a daunting topic, but the laval makes IT approach able, talking with industry experts, journalists and artists to discover what's real and which just hype about the technology. Listen to the ted aee show wherever you get your podcasts.

Walking a surge engine, empty of vote, no question too big, no question too small, not too lying out. I found myself talking to a search engine last time. Do you want into something yourself? Can you say your name?

sure. I am liz.

Where am I talking to from where are you?

So I am at work at an undisclosed corporation in kenza city, missouri. Bliss.

who works for an undisclosed corporation, was going with a question about a problem that was not afflicting her exactly. IT was afflicting her partner, also a listener.

My name is you .

didn't lead. If if your privacy is important to you, you can just identify as a jet.

just identify as jet.

Jet, in less two private people who are overriding their instincts, privacy, to talking to a microphone on purpose because of their curious ity about this event that had experiences together. This event had to do with a car. Jet had bought online, buying the car, had sent him into a kind of biocon tic poggi, the sort of hellup that consumes people and wants to know why that had happened.

The whole ordeal began because jet was moving from ohio to be with liz in missouri, which meant all the usual adjustments, selling his house, opening a new bank account. But nothing was really going right. There were problems moving the money.

They were constrained deadlines. They felt cursed month. And on top of the three days before this regard move, he goes to the mechanic. The brace have been acting up on his car.

He takes a look at IT. He says, I shouldn't let you drive home and you absolutely can't drive this cross country. So he says, we have two options.

One, I can. I think he had to replace the brakes entirely. So that's going to cost significantly more than the cars worth.

Two, you get a new car. I had three days to figure this out, and I was working at least nine to five on those days. I didn't have time to go around and visit dealerships.

So I started looking at websites. I looked at carvin. A IT was like the only realistic way that .

I could get a car in three days. Caravan nana cars, a website wear with a push of your thumb. You could order a car off the internet as smoothly as you would buy. A packed batteries of a amazon .

h was so easy. I chose a car that night and financed IT and was ready to go. That's amazing.

I would .

describe this as like a typical that behavior like that is the kind of guy who like, when you need to buy like new art for the house, really like a new laam. People make a powerpoint presentation researching all of the options and like presented to you. So this was like, I think IT really was you were kind of like at the end of your rope with all of this. So this is probably like a unique situation for you.

I would say, yeah, I just needed a solution.

govern a promise. The car show up like magic. And on june second of twenty and twenty three, just two days after jet hit by on the website, that's exactly what happened.

They bought my old car with the bad breaks. They dropped off in the won. They were delivering IT in my front tour. So the plane was, they would deliver the car, and I would take off at that moment.

There was a hatch. Jed says that the twenty fifteen White super outback arrived with the full of paperwork, but there is no titled the car in that folder. A cars tittle is the document that says you are its legal owner.

It's like you're deed for the car jet also needed registration that the document where the state as this car can have a license played IT can be driven on the road. Carona was supposed to handle the registration for jed, but IT needed a couple more documents from to get this new car registered in the state where he was gna live missed before. Now jet is fine carvin a had to lie temporary tags, which meant jet could proceed with this plan and drive on. So jet arrives his new home with liz, and for the next several months he gets busy with work. He hasn't pay much notice to the phone calls and emails from carvin a saying he's missing some documents.

I'm not that worried about IT like OK. We're missing a few documents. But this how hard could this be when I have a free afternoon and i'll go on to the D. M. V.

And i'll take care of IT.

So then what happens? S, so one of the documents that they need is what's known as a certificate of non assessment. Just shown that I don't know any property tax on the car because I just moved to missouri.

yeah.

So to get that certificate, I have to go down to the county courthouse. Fine, no big deal. So I make some time I go to the courthouse and they won't even talk to me without a title. And of course, they want I don't have any proof that I own this car.

You say won't talk to you. Like what does that look like? Like they are just like you take a number, you get to the thing and they're like, exactly.

I did. I took a number. I waited. IT was frustrating, right? I get to the front death.

They ask, you have the title. I say the titles and come back. So I call carvin a and this was the moment when I realized something was up.

So the people in carvings a were remarkably friendly. That's something that stuck with me, just just probably friendly and eager to help. Everything's gone really well up to this point.

And talking to this nice woman and arizona, where they're based and explain the situation, and SHE says, oh, so they will give you the certificate. That's odd. And in the friendly is stone.

And if he keeps talking, I realized, wait a minute, I am in the middle of a game of chicken between carvin a and the state of missouri. Oh, this is their whole perspectives like that's that's weird. They should just give you the way saying maybe they should from your perspective, they're not going to I can't talk them, end of this.

You can't talk them end of this. Like we're talking about A A state government here. They're not going to yield .

yeah and I will say like one of the worst places you can find yourself in american life is between two institutions when you have a problem, each of whom have a representative who's claiming that the other institution would need to solve IT like IT is the most damn have as a citizen.

That's exactly right. And you know, it's just immediately crazy making and you I guess this woman is friendly and helpful, otherwise she's asking for anything else you can do. And I say way, but we need to resolve this like there has to be a way through here and I really don't think the way through is bullying the state .

of missouri into their .

long into violated their policy. Yeah.

jed had specially entered a hell loop. We've been here. I certainly have the way I hell loop works ordinary in america. Customers actually have a decent amount of power. Corporations want to keep us heavy.

They're afraid of the various tantrums we can threaten them with to take our business elsewhere, to take our complaints to the internet. But sometimes your power just goes away. You end up stuck between two institutions.

Each one is sharing you. No, no, no. You're the other ones problem. And you find yourself filled with panic. How many weeks of your life are going to sink into the void? How many numbers will you be asked to take before you get your Normal life back?

Will you stand in front of a mirror, aging in fast motion, watching liver spots appear on your face while you mother the words yes, I hold, will they glue the phone to your ear in your classes as your adult children lower you into the ground, wishing they have gotten to know you? That's the fear to turn to jed, who was standing on the steps of the misery courthouse in the first hours of his hot look. What he knew then is that both parties were standing firm, cavaney insisted.

Janney did the registration for missouri. The woman at the missouri courthouse insisted jed needed the title from carbon. By this point, jed's temporary heggs had inspired so he could not legally drive his White super outback. He needed to solve this, so he goes back into the courthouse to convince that state employee to given the one document that he needs.

I took another number, and I went back to the desk and I started explaining what was going on. And the woman intercept to me and said.

carvin a and SHE said, this happens all the time.

We're always having problems with carvings. A SHE said, its a problem on their end, and they need to work IT out. Then I went to google and I started finding stories just like mine found the story of someone else in missouri the year before, who had waited, I think, a year for his title.

a silver super u out back with all wheel drive. Derek montane thought he hit the jackpot .

after this local news story from fox four problem solves is from february twenty twenty two. It's about a guy who but his super while back, also from carbon a also in missouri, and ended up in his own.

He paid in four for the super u eleven months ago, but he's still as an owit because CarOlina has never given him the title under misery fox.

for problems solved, they laid on a little thicker than we do its surge engine carvin.

I had the nerve to iled direct to take the title application to the dmv and try to register the car with that instead of the actual title. Well, that didn't work.

Told the lady I ve bought a car from car via and SHE chuckled .

LED at me that's .

guys you could understand why for jed, this might feel uncomfortable ly like seeing yourself on T. V. The happiness customer talking to the nodding reporter, the story was on to say that cavan a has had problems in multiple states .

and states are cracking down north oline as attorney y general, temporarily suspending carbon are from selling cars and drum after fAiling to deliver a title. Carbon is also on provision .

in mission north airline suspension that happened in a year later. Regulators in michigan and illinois also cracked down in cavaney to jet. These stories were more evidence that the problem was being caused by carbon. And IT seemed insane to him that the company would just hand over the paperwork. He is paperwork.

Why wouldn't vanna give me the title to the car that I owned and and had been driving? Or that I understood that I owned and had been driving for months. Why don't I have the title to the car that I purchased?

This is when I get frustrated, email pj, because I am taking this extremely personally, because I am the reason that had has sold his house, has bought this card, drive across the country, has like given up everything. And i'm thinking, like, can one thing go right here that makes this cross contrary move to be with me feel like a good idea?

I did not understand at all because it's like, I mean, I not in a judgemental labor like why is liz getting involved enough that we're talking the lives but I told understand when you explain that which like i've seen this dynamic in friends actually recently where it's like someone moves for someone else and then all the sudden it's like anything that goes wrong in the new place. The partner who encourages the move feels like i'm sorry this is happening and also, can I fix IT? Yeah like I got the reason this .

is happening but IT IT doesn't happen and less he looks across the country to be with.

You so certain engine have been consult IT. And to be clear, gentleman st weren't t asked me to solve their problem, their grown ups, they were asked me to answer the question why titles to cars are not valuable on their own. There's no reason to hoard them, lizz had asked her email.

Given the bad press, I have to assume carbon a has a compelling business reason for refusing to give those titles up right away. What is IT? What I thought was a really good question. Let is first to us.

A year ago, november twenty, twenty three, and after month of digging, learning a lot more about use car dealers, a bit more about pickle ball and the caravan, a who you will hear from in the story. I have an answer, not an answer. What would have imagined last fall that answer and the story that let us down after a break?

Welcome back to the show. So I was a new by when I came to wondering ing about carvin a but I knew a reporter who's been wondering ing about this company for years long enough that I think IT may afraid the edges of his mind. okay. I feel like you will be able to answer at least the first question.

Okay, that's a good start.

肯定 苑 职业学校。

correct.

I'm been folded .

and I reported the was your journal.

I referred to ban as the Youngest remagen I ever met. I stand by that character zone. He is the world weariness and back complaints of someone beyond these years.

He's also a formidable journalist right now. He's investigative reporter for the wall street journal's finance section, but back in twenty nineteen, he moved to detract to cover the auto industry for the journal. First thing he did bought himself a car.

Where did you buy your car on a use car? A lot like like a real old school used carlot.

Did you get to deal? don't. Buying a used car from a used car dealer for most of us is not a great experience. But one of the big stories bend would wind up reporting on, as an reporter, was about this daring Young company that was trying to change all that. What is the origin story .

of CarOlina? How much time do you have?

A okay.

So Carola was started by a gera. R, Y of the third. OK is the Youngest guy first.

CEO very like energetic. How yg is in is early forties at this point. OK. He's also a ranked pick ball player so you can like watching play pick ball on youtube if you done and he's good. I mean, I don't know how to judge a pick ball player.

And you're also the CEO of carbon a who's our titles sponsor for this event. Thanks a lot for doing that for pick ball. Why get into pick ball now?

why? Personally, absolutely love this sport is kind of what I do for for fun these days. IT comes me. Obviously, we have no real .

morning Garcia here being interviewed. Court side. He's a handsome C. E, O, with wavy black hair. I guess this reveals some prejudice I didn't know I had, but he looks a lot more athletic than .

I pictured. A pick ball player being different. So we're really excited about what.

anyway, that's earth grc of the third. But carmona story actually begins one Garcia generation earlier.

Ernest car, see the third has a father. Ernest, er, see that the second, I earnest, see the second had still has the largest of what's called a buy here, pay here, dealer in america.

By here, he selling .

to people that the business.

the economy, owned by the father is called drive time, an enormous used car retailer with locations in thirty days, the father had made a fortune. Link use cars. The old school way, the son will try to make his fortune in a new world, the shiny, gleaming world of internet .

startups. So the Younger ernie, the sun, he goes to stanford as one does, make friends with stanford people, and comes out, and he first goes to work grief. Ly, in granny connect, cut as a investment banker for a banker that had a pretty close relationship with early two.

And then he could join his drive time, and he starts working his way up. But only three. The sun also has this kind of stanford start up, you know, bug, right? yeah.

He wanted to let go his own way. The family business is not a particularly sexy business, right, right? Used car sales to subprime BIOS is like find way to make a living, but it's not like silicon valley start up. You not going on the podcast to talk about that usually.

So in twenty twelve, after some years spent working for A A dad at drive time, burning geraci of the third would go found a carvin a and IT would end up being a business that will get attention both from entrepreneur podcasting s but also the business world at large.

We are incredibly delighted to have your arney. You guys are about to hear one of the most incredible support stories in the country right now.

And just how this club is from twenty seventeen, an interview on billionaire 点 com， only the third here, clad in a royal purple sip loafers, no socks, the interviewer asked earnie to tell his founder story. And earning begins by talking about the problem he was trying to fix. Buying a used car in amErica has not changed for over century and is not experience that anyone seems to enjoy. Plus he points out, at a very inefficient market size step among so many different car dealers.

There are sixty thousand dealers in the us. I mean, sixty thousand dealers. That's a tremendous number. Um you know the largest one has a one point six percent market chair. So competition is really fragmented and IT was just like what do you want?

It's like the question that CarOlina was trying to answer is that used cars are incredibly fragmented market.

meaning that there's like all source of use car dealership.

There's not like one yeah there's like a guy in queens with like forty cars in a parking lot and a little booth, right? And not to use .

car dealer and what the internet has done to almost not every industry but many industries to be like o there's tons of bookstores. No, there's one bookstore and call the amazon. It's a everything you .

say I think was just IT felt so obvious. So I mean, if you not to borrow with numbers, but automatic retailers, a trillion dollar through which, to put that in context, early, the whole economies, fifteen trillion. In the retail economies, five trillion.

So for every dollar of physical things that are bought and sold in the U. S. Twenty cents of that dollars car. So the market is massive. I think that massive .

market burning was saying, caron of my capture, IT. And he believes that if the companies succeeded one day, the idea of buying a used car from a used car lot, you might just be another story. You bored your grandkids with the .

vision for carbon. Na, in the beginning was, they said this a lot. In the early days, the amazon of cars, why not consolidate and make a giant profit generating behemoth, ala. amazon?

So I just felt like like you're never going to get on the shot like this.

You have to go. But there's an issue with the amazon of used cars, which is, what if you think about IT?

Well, I will .

get OK one try. Books are easier to ship in cars.

Books in everything are like, not only that, but if you buy, you know, chinese made flight water from company a versus chinese made flight water from company, be like, these are interchange able products yeah. Use cars by definition, are individual little snowflakes like no two cars have been driven the same not only you these kind of little snowflakes, but there's snowflakes that weigh a ton or two time and and then you have to drive them around the country.

right? They're not widget.

They're like the opposite of amin. Let's snowball how often we see an amazon delivery car or truck on our block. We eight times a know how many porters are piled onto that like dolly that they're willing around, can do that with a car.

So CarOlina is trying to do something very difficult, something difficult ough that amazon has been able to pull off. But carvin a starts building an entire supply chain, a website where customers can buy and sell cars, but also physical spaces to inspect cars and get them ready for sale. A transportation ARM to deliver cars to people's homes across america. Corona builds the chain, but when they're done, they rust. That what is missing is the customers on I needed way to get attention.

We were not a hot silicon valley company with with venture capital investors that had a lot of attention from the media.

Here's earnie see the third on the cars and culture podcast.

We could not get anyone to cover us to save our lives. And we were trying so hard to get any coverage because you first start up, media coverage is one of the only ways to get the word out in twenty .

and fifteen are on a hit on a way to finally get the word out. They seized on a diabolical marketing damage.

The used car business is going high tech with carvings, a the world's first fully automated coin Operated car vending machine launch today right here. And nash fell.

These structures that CarOlina would call car vending machines really meant this. The company would have some physical locations, and those locations would be seventy five foot high class structures model to look a bit like the many machines kids buy little toys from.

It's the first complete online auto retailer in the world that allows you to pick up your car. From an auto vending machine, the whole .

thing automated.

If you bought car from cremona, you could get IT delivered to your house the boring way, or you could come get up from one of these Nancy new machines.

You come here to the carbon to welcome center, where you're given a coin, you put the coin in this machine, and that starts the vending process and get this, you even get to keep the coin.

IT was completely, Sally IT had very little to do with a carbon, this court business, or even what was novel about the company. But IT was ahead and cavan, a open vending machines all across the country. The vending machines, when I mentioned ed coronated, people are still the thing that seems to have stuck in everyone's heads. But the thing they got, wall street, the pay attention to carbon, was actually something beyond the company's control, the pandemic.

So the pandemic was black, amazing for carvin a at first, right, because people weren't going out shopping. Last thing you want to do is like I was at a car dealership on march eleven. There's something like twenty, twenty just kind of being like, what are we gonna do like watching watching a car dealer kind of recon with the coming sales of popes.

People are.

yeah, the sales people were scared because they work on commission. yeah. And so if nobody y's coming, like people weren't sure if car dealers were essential businesses, right? Nobody he's going to put you in the box to talk about financing like that. The last thing.

anybody yeah and so there's .

that new car assembly stopped for a while, which drove up used car Prices like crazy, right? IT was kind of a perfect tailor for carbon. A they were growing. They expanded super, super rapidly till they keep up with their growth trajectory .

in twenty twenty one corvus, also over four hundred twenty five thousand cars. The stock Price more than quarter bold and earning the third was all over T V, celebrating his companies extremely good quarter on cnbc host Andrew ross sorkin as essentially, won't the car on a dark place eventually have to settle down a little little bit? I can't go to the moon.

I think the bigger question for the market and try to understand where we are in our economy and what's going on to some the supply with cars, new cars, used cars, is whether this is going to sustain .

itself like good. Instead just answers a question he wished. He d been asked.

if you don't want, I want to take A A moment to take a Victory lap. S his, our first positive. Thank all the people who are one of the work so hard of the last eight years to make that possibly.

You know, eight years ago we launch, we saw a couple hundred cars. This counter, we sold over hundred thousand cars, and this year will sell thousand times many cars. We sold that first year to do that, having first profit quarters, something that were really, really proud of. And so thank you. That one out there on the car, on the team, pray job.

Erne's face on C, N, B, C, next to a big Green hacking stick of his company's stock value. It's hard not to think this is probably something he visualized in the eight hard years of trying to build this company when nobody paid attention, when we had to go on local T, V, news in a giant venting machine to try to get wall street to take him seriously. He's finally in the place where he must have wanted to be, and he's about to get knocked out of IT. Because the same pandemic that shut down the brick mortar competition that made a lot of people desperate to find a car, that pandemic was also shutting down a kind of in person office that earnings company actually depended on.

One of the things that happens is also D M V shut down and D M V slow down. And so all of the Normal kind of title processing and all the paperwork side gets really screwed up a so .

at the same moment, they're having a ton of customers come in the door at many state .

levels that the actual processing of the paperwork gets all messy.

Interesting that would not have occur to me. Turns out the hard thing of about being amazon, but for cars, isn't just that cars are heavy to ship or that use cars are unique and unwieldy, is that buying a car is one of the more paperwork intensive purchases in live. To be an amazon means to take care of pei logistics invisibly, but with all these state D N V under stress, those pesky details became quite visible.

Without A D M V can't transfer title, which Normally means you can sell a car, but carvin a kept selling cars, and the first place bans have them get in trouble. For this was in rally. This is August twenty twenty one.

The first thing that put them on marital, as they had a deal ship, get suspended in north CarOlina.

A, A, 是。 And what did the state's say? Why are they doing IT?

Because of because of like paper work issues.

You've like to seeing the big vending machine of cars from the bet line and rally. The machine is now out of water after the state accused them of improperly finding Carter les inspections and temporary tags.

You remember how our listened jad with years later here, a news story that reference are on his license being suspended in northern a this is that story.

The dmv claims carbon a violated licensing laws, fAiling to deliver titles to the dmv, selling cars without a state inspection and issuing an out of state temporary tag on a vehicle sold to someone in north CarOlina.

And why don't the states? I get the risk of asking a very obvious question, why are the states bothered by having people driving with either temporary .

tags or out of state temporary tags? Well, part of IT is that licenses are revenue for that state, right? So like if you're the north CarOlina at D O T and CarOlina is dealing with georgia to get you to be able to drive like you're not getting the revenue that you should be getting.

interesting. So that part of other who doing all that paperwork and have to, like, do things the way that things have always been done are grumbling. Car dealers are also a pretty powerful lobby in every state. I know. And there are no friends of carvin.

A some version of this situation, north CarOlina a, was happening in lots of states, cavaney getting in trouble with local officials, in some instances facing class action lawsuits. Twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two was a dark time for the company. Most crucially, wall street saw CarOlina making what I believe was a bad acquisition, taking on a lot of debt and carbon as stock Price promoted from a high of three hundred seventy dollars to three and a half box per share at ninety nine percent drop in value. Good afternoon, and welcome to the carvings.

A fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty two earnings .

conference call in earnings call in twenty twenty three, earnie had to stand in front of everybody and defend his leadership.

Thanks, bag, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call.

Ten years ago in january two thousand and thirteen.

we launched carbon a in a landy ord o. We are passionate group of people who believe we could build something new in the world that we would be proud of.

Type here almost like an adult in detention. Unlike his previous Victory tord, he does not sound like a man having fun who .

would be twenty, twenty two, have a lot of hard days. We're scrappy group. And hard days are always the worst thing. The world for scrappy people. Scrappy people find a way and we're finding away.

By the time this earnings call happened in twenty twenty three, cone was saying publicly that he had worked out the kinks in its system. The D. M, V. The company relied on had long centry opened the paperwork backlog. Es have been worked through the source of carbonates headaches, in theory, should have been resolved.

That summer, a man named jed, a man with excEllent taste podcasts, would be moving from ohio to missouri to be with his partner of this in a bind. He'd buy a car from carbon a, he'd buy a car before months. He would not have the title to that car, and he wouldn't understand why.

Why didn't gravani just take the title from wherever they were keeping IT and send IT to him? Only carbon? I knew the answer to that question after a short break, 开始 发来。

Welcome back to the show. I ve spent a lot of time in judge paper trail rankly more than I wanted to as somebody who tries to avoid almost all bureaucratic entanglement in my own life at any cost, meaning I don't wanna speak to the manager. I don't, anna, respond, if you bring me the wrong food, I will just eat IT.

IT was strange for the search and and team to dive so deeply into someone else's hel loop. But we did. We got jedge permission to go through his correspondence with carbon.

A, we talked to carbon. A, we emailed with the missouri D. M.

V. The missile department revenue oversees the D, M. V. A fact I never wanted to know, but I now understand what happened. I know who mess up.

I know I just titled so hard to get into his hands, and now that I do know that I also know a little bit more about how the world works and how sometimes doesn't. So let me take you on to understanding the whole problem, like what was happening behind the scenes of the process striking jad bads. I want to start by playing this conversation I had with a man named tony hall, who works at carava in a very important role. Can you say your name, introduce yourself in and what you do?

Yes, my name is tony hall and the head of policy for title and registration, modern ization. And i'm part of carbon as government affairs team.

Tony works at carbon a now, but part of I wanted to talk to him is because of very used to work at an institution americans have hated, maybe since the invention, the D. M. A, because they answered to our question really starts with the D.

M. V. And before he were to carve, ana, tony hall spent a decade at the taxi. The envy actually hold more than a decade.

I spent ten and a half years working for the texas department motor vehicles. Seven and a half of those were actually on the title, policy and procedure side of the house.

Do you live for, like a decade paperwork?

I spent a decade living in paperwork and trying to move to digital processes. Yes.

tony was able to give me a picture, not just of how inefficient A D. M V actually is, which way more than I had imagined, he actually able to offer an explanation for why IT might be that way is something he first began to understand in september twenty eleven when he was just a Young M V employee. I don't know very much about the texas D.

M. V. How paper was IT when you started and how digital was .

IT when you end IT when I started? Essentially, everything was relatively paper based. There were some very old school methods that dealers had where they could enter data into a laptop, put the data on a thun drive. They would take the thumb drive with the physical paperwork and walked into the county tax office, the county tax office for plug the thumb drive into the state computer terminal, and then no joke. They would sometimes literally put a stabler on the enter button and have IT runs through all the screens on the transactions.

And I think some drive could hold twenty five transactions, and then they would kind of post out of the paperwork to make sure, do we have all the documents? Are things sign where they need to? Obviously, there were paperwork issues. They were sending .

ough back to the D. M. B. Tony said, back then, there is an entire job for someone called the title runner, like a car dealer would pay a title runner to pick up the title from the dealership and run IT over to the country tax office.

I am an impatient person, said, the fact of all this just makes my jaw drop a little bit. There are government offices that aren't like, famous for functioning well. But D.

M. V. Officers are famous, not functioning at all. What is IT about motor vehicle paperwork? That time is local government.

You ve got to keep in perspective a motor vehicle for many people as the most valuable asset that they, if you own a home, is your second most valuable asset general, right? So I feel like there's a lot of sense of we've got to make sure as a government agency, we are doing this right, and we are protecting all the parties that are involved with the people rely on a motor vehicle to get to and from work, take care their kids, take care of family members, whatever the case may be. So what may seem like an inoculate s air could be life changing. And I think that innately drives this sense of any time you're doing something new and innovative, even when there is a demand for inevitably, you're going to be introducing new risk.

So luck, obviously, at least in my opinion. Obviously dmv s are inefficient for many reasons. But according to tony, there's at least one good one that in some way their slowness may have a logic.

You'd rather be inefficient than make a mistake because for many people, their car is our most valuable possession. Car dealers, when they sell you a car, they handle the title and registration for you, and they get used to the course of the rules of their particular state. The envy corona, as a national company, has had to learn the rules and regulations of fifty dmv s and stay on the right side of all of them, tony said. That is complicated.

Every state does things different. In some states, you have safety inspections. In some states, you have any inspections.

In some states, you have emissions inspections. Some states you have multiple combinations. Tions of those who can do those sorts of instructions varies. In some states, dealers can do those themselves. In some states, you have to take those vehicles and have somebody else perform those inspections.

This is a podcast we're going to tell you about every one of these rules or every one of these rulers exceptions. But things get nearly .

and you also have state and federal regulations that govern the transfer of ownership of a vehicle. And you're trying to layer all these things specific to a particular person's circumstances.

So every car is a snowflake, every dmv is a snowflake, and every car owner is a snowflake. Each more beautiful than the last jet is our snowfall lake. A nice man who is in a hurry to move across the country, to be with the sweet hard, who just happened to get caught between two complicated and interrogation system, the missouri department of motor vehicles and caravan a so I want to retell you jed story.

I'm even going to replace some of these quotes, but I want you to hear the story from the behind the scene, tropic tive, that gave on ahead carvin a under White subway outback. The company wanted to sell IT. The titles to that car belong to carvin a.

Again, the title literally a piece of paper, like a physical piece of paper. That's as carbon. Ana, once the car that title said in the headquarters of carbon, was literally in a filing cabinet, among many filing cabinets in a building in that header was in the filing cabinet. When jet press a button to buy the car.

I chose the car that night and financed IT and was ready to go.

We delivered the car to the customer in ohio on june second, twenty twenty three.

That's hello public, a senior manger of communications at carbon. A she's to working customer service.

The customer provided us a missouri address that was his home address h and then indicated that missouri was where he wanted to register the vehicle.

So the cars have been delivered. The title stayed in the file cabinet at carbon a in order to transfer that title to jed. She's what was supposed to happen.

According to the rules of the missouri deva, the suburb needed to be registered to registered. The state needed proof of several facts that the suburb had has inspection misery. The jet, its driver, had insurance, and the jet had hit taxes on the car.

Because in missouri, every in the state is an annual tax on their cars. I'd never heard about if jet could prove those facts to the state his car be registered, be driven and if it's register, then and only then with the state missouri print up a new title and go to jet. All of us a long way of saying the jet needed three pieces of paper.

I'm not that worried about IT like OK were missing a few documents, but how hard could this be when I have a free afternoon? I go under the D. V. And i'll take care of IT project.

He had no idea.

The customer called us. He was actually sitting outside the Jackson county assessor s. Office because that's when he received information that he needed the title in his name, which starts a bit of a cycle.

This bit of a cycle. This was a hell lip. This was where jan god stock.

our advocate is explaining that we can provide a title in his name. SHE explains that we do have a title. It's titled in carbon, his name, but we can't provide IT to him until the registration is complete. And so he actually walks inside the courthouse on his phone with the advocate.

Sorry, guess you a question. Is this like you you're describing this in like like a very high out of detail. Is this because like when he says, like you're call maybe recorded for quality assurance, this was this call recorded for quality assurance? Yes.

I remember vividly standing in that courthouse just thinking, I don't know where to go from here. I took another number and I went back to the desk and I started explaining what was going on. And the woman interact to me and said, carvin a hh.

And SHE said, this happens all the time. We're always having problems with carvings, a SHE said. Its a problem on their end and they need to work IT out.

I can now, after a months of reporting by search engine, although we were working on other self at the same time, confidently report this was actually a problem on the state scent.

They needed to work IT out this one state employee SHE made a human mistake SHE misspoke IT happens corvus customer advocate would wide up calling the state directly, figuring out the judge did not in fact need a physical tittle with his name on IT that he just needed a photocopy of the title carbon. His name on IT and jet would end up showing that email 的 photo coffee to a state employee finally gave what he needed。 IT is to understand that a large part of carbonic job is just to intricate understand bureaucratic logic.

Bureaucratic logic is different from human logic. IT doesn't pretend to be internally consistent. So understanding why one rule exists, warn necessarily help you predict another.

But bureaucratically logic has been followed by human beings who make human errors. They answered a jazz question, why didn't carvin a just hand over the title to him? Corona is a car dealer.

States expect car dealers to handle title and legislation paperwork. The cars they saw and deals can just improvise on the fly. Their state licenses are stay here.

Dealers have to give their paperwork to the state and the state that issues the new title to the new owner. I did run this bit with the missouri I problem of revenue. Who runs the missouri D.

M. V. They confirmed that, of course, the promise of buying a car on your phone is that, in theory, not have to know about any of this carvin a is trying to offer a he most experience.

So how often do they actually deliver that? What seems clear to me now is that the cases where carbon customers do not get title and registration in a timely manner, those were happening much more frequently from mid twenty twenty three, twenty twenty one. The company acknowledges us.

They shared internal data showing frequency of registration delays. You see some before the pandemic, more during that. But then after the pandemic, after the company takes a big, big hit for this, you see things get smooth.

Doubt the tRicky cases become increasingly rare. Tony from carbon a said that if you believe the customer experiences is really getting Better, IT might not just be carbon a doing a Better job. IT might also be the D.

M. VS. He says that the handex c, which shut so many dn VS down, was also finally the push they needed to plug their systems into the internet.

COVID certainly change the narrative around the how antiquated the title registration processes to the extent that dmv themselves are having the most subsidy of conversations a about this issue. And I would say they have had more conversations about this title registration modernization just broadly in the last two tune a half years, and they probably have ever had before.

It's funny to think, like of all the unit consequences of a goal, dec, one of them would be more pressure, the envy, to have electronic record systems that work. I would not have guess that in the beginning, but it's year like earlier in the story when they we talk about IT. Is that like the big idea at that corvo CEO had beginning is just like to create essentially like amazon but have used cars living the you talk i'm like, oh, someone who would have been imagined that dream in like twenty fifteen. I think they would have been perhaps impossible to like totally understand the amount of tangle that they would ultimately have to untangle and together.

still untangling IT. Yeah, I mean, this is a daily evolving process for us.

So that's carbonate story. The company seems to be in pretty good shape these days. Most news stories you see are about their come back, not their problems.

And the stock Prices both have recovered. We were relate ed, all this to our listeners dad and is who were at first, I think, a little confused. I think it's possible all of us here where may be judging carbon by a reputation IT may have outgrown.

It's a little tough like go of who doesn't love the story of a glitz start up founded by a pickle ball playing CEO that grew too quick and stumbled. We know that story. It's easier to tell.

And you spend much less time having to learn about the intractable of how paperwork functions at the missouri department of revenue. Anyway, jet and lives to their war now understand all of these intricacies. They will return against misery court house this month, but for much happier reasons, this time they're picking up a marriage license.

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