Which Is the Day Not To Sell Your Car In Panama?
Posted: Monday, March 09, 2009
by Michael Price
Panama Investment Vacations
I am from the UK and selling a car consists of two steps: 1. Agreeing a price with the seller
2. Splitting the registration document in two' For the buyer and seller to each complete and send to the Vehicle Licensing centre in Swansea, Wales.
1. Agreeing a price with the seller
2. Visiting one municipality office to pay $6
3. Visiting another municipality office to pay another $40
All this is fine with me as long as you travel with a local as finding these places on your own – they don't have street signs in Panama - could be a bit difficult.
However, there is one item they forgot to put in the advice book
Don't sell your car on the last day of the month
Panamanians have until the last day of each month to pay their road tax license. While I am a sure that this in common place in a lot of counties – they probably have a more automated system.
In Panama City there are five offices where the road tax license can be renewed. Let us speculate and say that Panama City's population of 1 million own 100,000 cars. Roughly speaking that means that each month will have 8,000 renewals.
The problem is that human nature will dictate (along with pay day) to leave the purchase until the end of the month. So you can see if 5,000 people leave it to the last day – each office will have to cater for 1,000 customers – and each office only has 3 cash desks which are not manned at all time as the staff must take one obligatory coffee breaks.
Of course, I was blissfully unaware of this and turned up at lunchtime on Friday 27th February to visit the first of the offices to be faced with a queue of 200 people outside the office with an unknown number crammed inside.
Unperturbed, I said to my buyer lets come back at 07:00 on Monday morning. This we duly did to be faced with the unavailability of the cashier's computer payment system which was caused by overload Friday's processing.
Having waited 4 hours we concluded that the system was unlikely to reappear today, it was a waste of time staying and we would have to be back for the third day to conclude the deal.
But it is not as easy as that in Panama city – Tuesday has been designated overflow day for all the people who did not get processed on Friday.
As this is only Monday evening and I have resorted to the local rum to reduce my frustration I don't know if I will be able to sell the vehicle yet but there is one thing that I do know
I wont be selling a car at the end of the month again in Panama City!