Michigan Secretary of State Portals at Meijer
The pandemic of COVID-19 hurt the ability renew your Michigan vehicle registration, the Secretary of State offices were closed and appointments backlogged the system. The state allowed a delay for your license tab renewal and overlooked the penalties associated with not having current registration. This grace period is coming to a close this Wednesday September 30, 2020 however.
How Does it Work
First of all, you can only use these kiosks if your insurance company has electronically informed the state that you have insurance. The state will then have sent you a renewal notice with a barcode on it to renew. You will need this barcode to renew your vehicle(s).
We tried the new Self Service stations at Meijer to see what it is all about. These kiosks are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
The draw back and really there is only one from what we can tell is that you will pay a “technology fee” of $3.95 which the kiosk rather passive aggressively tells you is not going to the State of Michigan. We surmise that this “fee” is basically rent being paid to Meijer for the Kiosk living at the store.
We suspect this is the case because in years past when we used the Kiosks at Secretary of State locations the only fee was a credit card service fee assessment and the kiosks of years past were well based on “technology”.
At Meijer’s Kiosk you pay that in addition to the “technology fee”.
You can only really do two things besides renew a license plate, you can add your Michigan State Park Passport, or oddly request a new license plate which the machine states may not match your current license plate. This is likely because due to a relatively unknown law, if your license plate is over 10 years old, or is unreadable or rusted out like many on the road you are supposed to purchase a new license plate.
Okay cool where are these located?
It does not appear that all Meijer’s have these kiosks Self-service stations have been installed at the following Meijer stores to date:
- Auburn Hills – 800 Brown Road
- Battle Creek – 2191 Columbia Ave. W
- Battle Creek – 6405 B Drive N
- Belleville – 9701 Belleville Road
- Big Rapids – 15400 Waldron Way
- Cadillac – 8605 34 Road
- Chesterfield – 27255 23 Mile Road
- Clinton Township – 40445 S. Groesbeck Highway
- Commerce Township – 1703 Haggerty Highway
- Detroit – 1301 W. Eight Mile Road
- Detroit – 21431 Grand River Ave.
- Escanaba – 505 N. 26th St.
- Fraser – 34835 Utica Road
- Gaylord – 250 Meijer Drive
- Grand Rapids – 1540 28th St. SE
- Greenville – 606 S. Greenville West Drive
- Kalamazoo – 6660 W. Main St.
- Lincoln Park – 3710 Dix Highway
- Ludington – 3900 W. US-10
- Madison Heights – 1005 E. 13 Mile Road
- Marysville – 205 S. Range Road
- Mount Pleasant – 1015 Pickard St.
- Muskegon – 700 W. Norton Ave.
- Portage – 5121 S. Westnedge Ave.
- Rochester Hills – 3175 S. Rochester Road
- Roseville – 30800 Little Mack Ave.
- Shelby Township – 15055 Hall Road
- Southfield – 28800 Telegraph Road
What else can I do to renew my registration?
The only other way to get your license tabs renewed on relative short notice is to attempt to see if the kiosks are accessible at Michigan Secretary of State locations still.
If you are planning ahead you can renew by mail or internet but given the crazy state of unreliable US Postal Service we opted to pay extra while we had to get some groceries.
Last Resort
Most Secretary of State reserved time slots are not booking for 3 or 4 months away at this point. So if you prefer to do things in person the old way, you need to plan far far ahead and book your appointment 4 maybe 5 months ahead of your birthday or vehicle registration renewal date.
Would we do it again?
Yes, This experience is actually quite convenient the location we used had no line of people waiting to use the machine, and sure it cost more, but it was less painful than going to Michigan Secretary of State to use the kiosk there, especially if you are trying to limit your exposure in the public.