I've had to deal with this before. Once it was when I changed insurance companies and did that over the phone. My wife called it in, so I'm not sure if they heard her wrong, but I ended up getting a message from the California DMW after I renewed by mail that they didn't have proof of insurance on file for my car. I looked up our insurance cards and it was off by one number. But all I had to do was call up the insurance company and have them fix it, where it was automatically sent to the California DMV and they send out my registration card.
But my parents just got a Tesla Model 3 and properly insured it. But I'm thinking there's a 30 day requirement where an insurer has to insure a new car purchased by a policyholder and there's theoretically that time to specifically insure the vehicle. But my dad isn't really good with these things and asked me to look at their notice, which was a notice that the registration would be suspended in a month without proof of insurance. It's supposed to be automatically transmitted to the DMV, but I suppose they don't look up names to find VIN transcription errors. I asked to see their insurance card and saw that the VIN was off by one letter and one digit. Can't be sure if they heard my mom wrong or if it was just a typo. So I ended up calling (using my cell phone) GEICO on their behalf, where apparently they're dealing with large call volumes because of Idalia and where it automatically assumed I was asking about my policies. But once I had a human on the line I could explain that I was calling on behalf of my parents to fix the VIN number. But I was able to immediately download and print the updated ID cards. I did try and see if maybe the California DMV website would take the policy number and license plate number, but it said it couldn't verify proof of insurance. The website said that ID cards could be mailed in with their notice stub, or email it to them at a specific address (but no details on what information to provide other than a scan of the ID card). I figured it would be easier to just send them by mail and be done with it.
But it's a huge pain. The thing that would have been really nice would have been the ability to correct VIN information on the GEICO website, but there's no way to do that without talking to a human.
But my parents just got a Tesla Model 3 and properly insured it. But I'm thinking there's a 30 day requirement where an insurer has to insure a new car purchased by a policyholder and there's theoretically that time to specifically insure the vehicle. But my dad isn't really good with these things and asked me to look at their notice, which was a notice that the registration would be suspended in a month without proof of insurance. It's supposed to be automatically transmitted to the DMV, but I suppose they don't look up names to find VIN transcription errors. I asked to see their insurance card and saw that the VIN was off by one letter and one digit. Can't be sure if they heard my mom wrong or if it was just a typo. So I ended up calling (using my cell phone) GEICO on their behalf, where apparently they're dealing with large call volumes because of Idalia and where it automatically assumed I was asking about my policies. But once I had a human on the line I could explain that I was calling on behalf of my parents to fix the VIN number. But I was able to immediately download and print the updated ID cards. I did try and see if maybe the California DMV website would take the policy number and license plate number, but it said it couldn't verify proof of insurance. The website said that ID cards could be mailed in with their notice stub, or email it to them at a specific address (but no details on what information to provide other than a scan of the ID card). I figured it would be easier to just send them by mail and be done with it.
But it's a huge pain. The thing that would have been really nice would have been the ability to correct VIN information on the GEICO website, but there's no way to do that without talking to a human.
