250 dollar gamble, we don’t want your money, stormy

So the buyer of the 99 Tacoma showed up at my office mid-morning.  He told me had the cash in hand but it was more difficult than he expected because a check he got for some work had not cleared the credit union yet, forcing him to basically clear out the account.  I met him out in the lot to exchange the money and we then went inside to do the paperwork.  As we started the transaction it was apparent the guy wasn’t as prepared as he should have been.  Since he was short on funds he planned to just pay for the title transfer now and then come back the following day to get the license plate.  He also did not have his proof of insurance with so he wouldn’t have been able to complete the registration even if he had the money.

So the title transfer and sales tax came to a little more than $250.  The guy handed his credit union debit card as payment, despite the account being basically empty.  I assumed it could still be run as a credit card transaction.  Well the card was denied and it was apparently the only card he owned.  So now I saw two options.  We postpone the transaction until the next day when he has the funds necessary in his account or I front him the money out of what he already gave me.  I chose option two.

I pulled three hundred dollar bills out of the envelope and told the clerk this was now a cash transaction.  The buyer thanked me for extending myself.  Of course I knew I was taking a risk but he seemed like an honest guy to me and even if I never saw the 250 bucks I still have come out quite well in the transaction.   Since he had no plate yet he could not really drive the truck.  We agreed that I would drive the Tacoma with my plate to his Dad’s place that was about 5 miles away.  Once we got there I pulled my plate off and Shelby gave me a ride back to the office.  He thanked me again and said he would drop the additional money to me on Wednesday.  Despite my track record of being overly trusting in these situations I am hopeful my trust will be well deserved this time around.

So as planned Cindy picked me up after work to give me a ride home.  We swung into the credit union drive thru to deposit the envelope of cash.  I filled out the deposit slip and handed it and the envelope jammed with 100 dollar bills to Cindy to put in the transport tube.  A minute or two later the teller came over the speaker and said the most cash you are allowed to deposit via the drive thru is $3000.  The lobby was closed so I could not go inside and deposit the entire amount. What the fck…

I thought this was stupid.  I am a customer wanting to give a bank money and they tell me sorry, you can’t give it to us….  As we filled out a new deposit slip for $3000 and removed the excess money I was grumbling the entire time about the idiocy of this policy.  Is this an effort to subdue the drug trade or terrorism that deals with large cash transactions?  How do they come up with $3000 as being the magic number where the line of trust ends and distrust begins?  So regardless of the stupidity of this policy in my mind the bottomline is I will have to now make a second trip to the credit union unnecessarily.

The driveway at the house which for years was occupied by both the party van and the Tacoma now is conspicuously empty with our two remaining vehicles both residing in the garage.  It’s a weird feeling for sure.

Last night we were ripped out of our sleep repeatedly by strong storms that brought lightning, thunder, and 2-3 inches of rain.  I do not welcome the return of summer weather.

If you are a Duf-cast subscriber you should now have 4 or 5 episodes in your feed.  Unfortunately the stuff I recorded yesterday in the Tacoma had an abundance of rattling noise from the very long rig I had the GoPro attached to.