Twelve years ago, we bought a fullsize chevy van. Our local dealership paid to have the hand-controls installed and the Texas Rehabilitation Commission (Now DARS-Dept. of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services) paid to have my van equipped with a lift, transfer seat, etc. TRC paid for the modifications because I needed the van to be able to work. The van has been a real blessing, even though I was slow to take to the idea of using a power chair and a lift.
Last year we finally came to the decision that it was time to get a new van. We spent several months researching the type of van we wanted. It narrowed down considerably after talking to the company we use for modifications. They said the three easiest were the Chevy Uplander, the Dodge Caravan and the Toyota Sienna. We tried all of them and quickly settled on either the Carvan or the Toyota. It was almost a tie between the two, but I really liked the Toyota the best. DARS was going to pay for the modifications to be done; we just had to purchase the vehicle. We decided to order and finance the van through the Braun Corporation. They not only make a lot of disability equipment and lifts, but they have a bank for financing modifications and vehicles. Many regular banking institutions will not finance a vehicle that is going to be modified, because they will not sign a waiver allowing the modifications to be done. Braun said they would work with us with us which ever van we chose.
Advanced Mobility, the company in Ft. Worth that does my modifications, said that it would be best to invoice the vehicle through a local dealer. The van would come from the Braun Corporation, but be invoiced through the local dealer. That way if I ever needed to have the van worked on, the local dealer would treat me as one of their customers. Well the local Dodge dealer offered us $5,0000 off the price of a new 2007 van. That settled the question of whether to go with the Dodge or the Toyota! We picked out the type and color of Grand Caravan we wanted. Braun financed it, the van was ordered and the paperwork was completed very quickly. This was the end of November. Now comes the interesting part.
In Texas, if you buy a vehicle that is going to be modified for a handicapped individual, you pay no sales tax. The dealership took the paperwork to the courthouse, but was not able to register the vehicle. They said that we had to get the modifications done and prove it via pictures. That had always been easy before.
According to new DARS guidelines, since they were paying for the equipment, they required me to go to the Baylor Hospital's Rehabilitation Institute to be evaluated to make sure that I got the equipment best suited to me. This sounded reasonable, but a little irritating and scary. Who knew what they would recommend. I just wanted the same kind of equipment I'm used to!
It took a couple of weeks to get on Baylor's schedule. My wife could not go, and my shoulders will not allow me to drive that far anymore, but a great friend took me up there for the eval. The therapist at Baylor was very nice and professional. I was impressed. However, sure enough, she wanted to change up my hand controls...a lot! She recommended an electronic hand control unit, plus modified brakes and some new features added to the steering wheel. I was not pleased about the electronic hand controls. They operate differently than my manual ones. In addition, it was just one more thing with the potential to malfunction.
The end of December, the Dodge dealership contacted me. They wanted to get things settled with the courthouse and get the registration taken care of. They were still carrying an open ticket. In addition, the bank still did not have a copy of the registration or the title. We had already made our first payment on the van. DARS also contacted me because they could not cut a purchase order to start working on my van until they had a copy of the registration or a copy of the title receipt. Hopwever, the courthouse would not permit the vehicle to be registered as a tax free vehicle because I had not proved the work had been done. The office lady at the dealership explained that she had the paperwork showing DARS was committed to doing the modifications. However, the courthouse said that was not acceptable. The work had to be done first and the dealership had to prove it had been done. I called the courthouse and explained the problem to them, but I'm told the same thing. My DARS counselor contacted the courthouse and was told the same thing. Advanced Mobility contacted Austin for me to find out how this impasse could be resolved. They had never seen anyone go through a problem like this. No one in the DARS offices had ever had this kind of a problem before. We went on like this for 3 months with the courthouse and DARS requiring the other to act first. DARS wanted a copy of the registration or title receipt before they would order the work to be done. Our courthouse demanded proof that the work had already been done in order to waive the sales tax and issue registration papers and a title.
By the middle of February I was fed up. The salesman at the dealership was flustered. DARS was flustered. Advanced Mobility was flustered and I was tired of the whole mess. We were also about to make our third car payment and I had no new van! I told Patty, we were just going to pay the sales tax so we can get things rolling, then we would file for a refund. We borrowed the money and went down to the dealership to pay the sales tax so they could get the paperwork finished. The receptionist took our money, not to the office I have been dealing with, but to accounts payable. Fifteen minutes later the lady from accounts payable came up front to see me and gave me the money back! "Your van is tax free," she tells me.
"Yes, I know it is, but..." and I proceed to tell her the problem.
She says, "You don't understand. I just got off the phone from talking to the courthouse. I told them I have a copy of the estimate for all the work to be done on the van. They said that was all they needed! You don't owe any sales tax."
My mouth fell open. I was incredulous. This lady, in 15 minutes, had accomplished what no one else, including the dealership's sales office, had been able to do in 3 months!
By the next day, the local DARS counselor had already sent a copy of the registration receipt to her supervisor in Abilene office, she had approved it and forwarded the paperwork to Austin. It only took the head office in Austin a week to approve everything. But then....I found out there had been another change in the system. Austin sent the paperwork to an engineer at Texas A & M for final review and approval. The paperwork stayed in the engineer's office for about 5 wereks. Meanwhile, the van was sitting on a Braun parking lot in Indiana and we made another payment. There was some good news though. As the engineer reviewed the specs and my limitations, he decided to call the therapist at Baylor. He determined that my limitations were not severe enough to call for a drastic change in my hand controls. He convinced the therapist to change her recommendation. As a result, I was going to get the controls I originally wanted! This detour was good.
Once the engineer approved everything, DARS cut the purchase order for the work and it was forwarded to Advanced Mobility which forwarded it to Braun. Of course, by this time several vans are ahead of mine. Three weeks later, Braun puts my van on the assembly line to convert it to an Entervan. This involved dropping the floor, putting in a ramp, adding a kneeling feature to the van and doing some preliminary wiring work.
About four weeks ago my van arrived at Advanced Mobility in Ft. Worth and they began their work a few days later. Advanced Mobility put in the hand controls, added a lock-down mechanism for my powerchair (behind the driver's seat), modified the amout of pressure needed to operate the brakes and gas, added a knob to the steering wheel to operate the turn signals, wipers, horn and the high beam. They also added two back up systems for operating the ramp, a Drive Master system to guarantee me 5 minutes of power steering should the van die while I driving, and a back up system for the battery and the brakes.
Friday, June 27th, I got the phone call I've been waiting for. They needed me to be at Advanced Mobility on Monday for a "fitting." On Tuesday two inspectors (one from DARS and one from Texas A & M) would be there to inspect another van. The team at Advanced wanted to have m van ready to be inspected immediately afterward. My counselor at Advanced said that once the inspectors had signed off on everything, I could bring my van home!!! This was only three months later than it should have been!
We got to bring the new van home last week. It is a beautiful silver 2007 Dodge Caravan. It was high tech before, but with all the mobility features added, it is very high tech.
We ended up staying in Ft. Worth an extra day. Just before we got ready to head home late Tuesday afternoon, the power steering pump went out on the old van. Fortunately, we were still at Advanced. On the way to the motel, a couple of miles away, the power steering alarm went off on the new van, indicating that the Drive Master back up system had engaged.. We pulled over and I called Advanced. One of the head mechanics, Craig, was there in about 10 minutes. It turned out that a short had caused the Drive Master to turn on, even though the power steering was still operating correctly. He temporarily fixed that and followed us on to the motel. He did some more work on the van there and gave me his cell phone in case we had any more trouble before we came the next day to get the other van. He even came back this morning to check on us before we drove back to Advanced. By late morning we had the old van fixed and James and Amanda headed back. We stayed at Advanced while they double checked everything and drove the vehicle a couple of times. We are to go back and let them recheck everything again before the end of the month.