Secretary of State Plus

After years of excellent customer service at a now-​closed office in Mount Clemens, I simply can not find much good to say about this branch of the Secretary of State office.
They have a kiosk for ‘customers’ to check in with. Apparently it is too high tech, because when I visited today, one of the employees was manning the kiosk, pushing all the right buttons to produce a check-​in number. So much for efficiency in technology.
OK, some secretary of state years ago promised during her campaigning days that when they closed all of our neighborhood branches, we would be herded into larger super centers and would no longer have to stand in line. So the convenient and customer oriented branch offices were closed and we got herded. Now you just sit in a large room (most of the time they have enough seats, sometimes they don’t) and wait for your number to be called. Over the past 4 or 5 years that I have been keeping track, I usually have anywhere from 45 to 75 minutes of wait time before my number is called.
I have had an ongoing problem with the title to one of my cars. The original out-​of-​state title was incorrect, and Michigan didn’t catch the mistake. Over the past couple years, I have tried numerous times to get it fixed, but to no avail. I was told once that my VIN had to be manually verified, but they were simply too busy that day to walk out into the parking lot to do so. So much for customer service!
Today wasn’t any better. I was simply told that my registration renewal and the insurance certificate didn’t match. And on to the next customer … out the door I went, left to my own devices.
Somehow, you can contact a phone number and supposedly ‘get in line’ by sending a text message. I tried it and got a reply to enter my teacher’s code (I don’t even have a teacher anymore, so I guess that was a waste of my time). Then I tried to log in at their online website. Similar results — I couldn’t figure out how to make it work for me. So I decided to simply visit another branch further up Gratiot. Their customer service attitude is much better.