Police confiscate an Infiniti driver’s temporary tag over a common dealership practice that has nothing to do with the buyer
“Are you 100% sure that that tag is not real?” The driver asks the police officer. The officer kneels on the ground at the back of the TikToker’s Infiniti G35, which the driver recently purchased. He’s removing the car’s temporary tag. “Oh, 100%,” the officer responds. However, his reasoning isn’t accepted well in the comment section.
After unscrewing the paper tag and struggling a bit to tear the tag’s laminated covering off the plate frame, the officer seems to pause. “Um…”
He takes another long beat.
“Yeah, they don’t laminate temporary tags,” he says, “It’s printed on regular copy paper, right? It’s not even the right material.”
The temp tag sure seemed on there in a very intentional manner. After all, the TikToker, @vq37dj, posted a clip captioned “First time driving g35” five days prior.
Commenters roast the act
The TikTok is sitting at 23,000 comments…and 18.2 million views.
Many of the top-liked responses are from folks who either had a laminated temporary tag or people claiming to work at a dealership. They all say that their sales department hands out laminated temp tags, which they cover in plastic themselves before the driver heads out.
“Indiana dealer here , I laminate every temp tag I print,” one asserts.
“‘it’s just printed on copier paper not the material it’s supposed to be printed on.’ uhhhh, the 2 dealers I’ve bought cars from printed my tags out on copier paper and one laminated it,” a commenter posts with a “laughing hysterically” emoji.
“Use to work at ford, we laminate temporary tags….,” one said. “We laminate all our paper tags. What is they talking about? I work at a dealership,” another posited.
“Literally looking at my laminated tag,” a different driver says.
While many drivers tape their temporary tag to the back window, some get attached to the rear license plate cover just as the permanent metal one would later. The move protects the paper from the elements.
I was a licensed car salesperson for years myself. In Ohio, we had temporary tags that you’d fill out with permanent marker. The sheet, which was cardboard, had a peel-off laminate cover. You’d remove the backing layer and then fold it over the plate’s fields to protect it from rain, snow, etc.
After some poking around, it indeed seems like depending on your location, you might get a copy paper plate, too…something even more fragile than cardboard.
Three years ago, someone that worked at CarMax said that the company has speciality bags they put their copy paper plates in…similar to the G35’s.
In the end, it seems like the G35 owner got back on the road eventually…since they kept posting videos of the local police force coming after him for various traffic violations.
