The Basics: According to the statute, we must give the registered owner, lien holder and your customer 30 days notice to pay the outstanding repair bill, legal amount of storage and administative fee. If after 30 days payment is not received, the statute requires us to hold a public sale to satisfy your outstanding charges. If no one satisfies your lien, then we can apply for title under your business name. The title process takes approximately 3 weeks. The process in total takes approximately 8-10 weeks to complete.

Our Service to You: This includes certified mailing, newspaper advertisements according to statute, submitting proper paperwork to your local courthouse and applying for title. But most of all, we handle all the phone calls with regard to matter in our office as well as any payment. Once you have given us the paperwork, you can refer all calls to our office. Then our office works directly with you. We protect you with regard to payments. They must pay in full (no partial payments once the lien is in process) and only accepting cash or cashier check from owners, customers and lien holders which are deposited into our escrow account. Then our office, within 1-2 days of receiving payment, sends you the money owed to you. It’s that easy!

Requirements to get you started: 

• Copy of your current Motor Vehicle Repair Certificate (MV) for the state of FL, admininstered by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. 
• Be an active Florida corporation, reflecting so on the Florida Division of Corporations (sunbiz) wesbite. 
• Final invoice for all completed labor/ repairs performed on the vehicle, that you are still owed for. 
  • Please note: You cannot include any back storage, admininistrative fees, or payouts for a tow. Only labor and repairs completed on the vehicle. 
  • The state does not accept estimates as final invoices. We cannot accept an estimate alone. You must also send an invoice that states "repair as per attached estimate".
• Signed customer authorization/ work order.
  • Please note: If you do not have one signed due to getting the authorization over the phone/ verbally, please write "verbally authorized" with the date the vehicle was dropped off to your shop.  

If you have any questions about acceptable invoices & work orders, please print our Mechanics Lien Package, found on the "Documents" tab of our website. This goes into further details about all the information we require to be present on the invoices, as well as providing examples!

Out of State Vehicles/ VIN# Verification Inspection: 

When a vehicle is titled out of the state of Florida (or does not have a Florida title number), the state requires you to bring the vehicle to get a VIN# Verification Inspection performed on the vehicle. 

This inspection requires/ is required to: 

• Take place at the Motor Vehicle Field Operation- Regional Office that serves your county (cannot be done by a police officer, tax collectors office, etc). We will provide you with the list of offices when sending you all lien documents.
• The vehicle to be transported to the site (driven or towed), unless your county has a mobile unit.
• You to bring all lien documents with you, which we will provide to you. 

After the inspection is completed, send us the original affidavit of completion or bring it to our office (with the big red Division stamp on it). We must use the original when applying for the title on your behalf. 

Tips about the VIN# Verification Inspection 

• Call the office that serves your county in advance to book your appointment (some counties only do these inspections once a week/ month, etc).
• Keep us updated with your appointment date, so we do not continuously ask you for updates.