what is the supposed duration of a two year registration?

In May '03 I bought my Sclass.
the renewal notice two years ago expired in April.
I just got the latest renewal which shows a scheduled expiration of March '09.

my trailer seems to have the same creep problem but gets renewed every year.
january has moved back to october.

 

That's odd, in NY it lasts a full 2 yrs.

 

Ya know, I just got my reg renewal today and it was for March, when I bought my S in April... Not sure if it was that way last year.

 

Very interesting. That sucks. Looks like the Registry has found a loophole.

 

When you registered the new Benz, was it a swap of plates from another vehicle, like a trade in? If so, the original expiration date, in your case the last day of march, carries on. Also, lets say you forget to renew until say August of the year it expires... When you finaly pay the renewal, you are also paying for the time SINCE expiration, so it will still expire the last day of March, and not August, when you paid.

All plates in MA expire on the last day of the month which is that last numeral in the plate. Ex: 3456AB will expire in June since June is the sixth month. XYZ123 will expire the last day or march, since 3 is March. In this way, you can tell whether a plate is expired by just looking at the color of the little year sticker and the last numeral in the number. All vanity plates expire in November and all commercial plates expire in December.

 

We bought the S in January 04. We didn't get two years on the first registration. The last digit on the plate is a 9. Registration expired in Sept of 06. We got ripped off too.

Check your last digit on your plate, unless you have a vanity plate, and that may answer the question.

Just realized Jeff said the same thing in his post. Guess they had a lot of left over September plates when we bought our car in January. I too assumed we had two years, never looked at the decal in the corner, but realized it once we got the renewal.

 

huh... It ends in a 3... and March expiration... had no idea.

 

Yep the registry is up to something. Our Highlander was purchased in March with new plates/registration. Now we had to renew in January of this year. We got shorted 2 months.

 

Jeff is right.
it appears to be tied to the last digit.
so I get to renew registrations for the next three months in a row.

 

The only thing I can think of, because I often scratch my head at how the registry operates, is this: Those of you who got less than two years out of a brand new registration were given plates from another month (obviously) but were charged less than the full 2 year fee. They can pro-rate the registration fee by monht from what I gather. If you had paid full 2 year fee and got say less than that, I would go in and complain. Seems very strange.