in my experince, i bought the car last week of April and told my agent that I want ending 5.. he told me that he can arrange it but the default ending that LTO is issuing is 4 since it's april.. and if the LTO dude will ask "extra charge" for selecting a plate ending, he will just pass the registration on first week of May so that it will have a default ending 5 that I prefer.

agent says that if you request plate ending of your choice LTO dude usually ask for "extra charge" of 1K.

i did not paid extra since my registration was processed in 1st week of May.. the down side, I was travelling without plate for an extra week... yon pa naman yong kalakasan ng huli sa No Plate No Travel Policy