Last week, the computer system at the Missoula County treasurer’s office crashed and folks are still experiencing extended wait times. Missoula County Clerk and Treasurer Tyler Gernant says about 350 customers did not get served.

“There was an outage in the statewide system that processes motor vehicle transactions,” Gernant said. “In the five years that I have been here, those outages will last anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours and last Friday it lasted the entire day. Those customers still have to get served. For the most part, that means they are coming back to our office this week, which is causing the delays this week.”

According to Gernant, folks should be prepared to wait longer than normal this week.

“Last week, our average wait time was about 45 minutes for a title transaction and about 30 minutes for a renewal transaction,” Gernant said. “This week, we are seeing closer to an hour and a half to two hours for a title transaction and anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour for a renewal transaction. The renewals will probably get caught up quicker because those don’t take as much time, but title transactions take a decent amount of time.”

Gernant says it is always difficult to determine when the system will go down.

“We don’t have any control over that,” Gernant said. “The Attorney General’s office controls that. What we do have control over is how we handle it. On Friday, we opened up additional appointment slots and allowed those folks who were in our office to make appointments for this week. That helped them since they have already been into our office. It also creates further delays because we are taking a staff person that would normally be devoted to walk in title customers and now, they are handling appointments.”

Gernant suggests that people wait a couple weeks to come in. If you do need to come in, you can check wait times at checktheline.us and you can reserve a spot in line at getintheline.us.

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