The DMV Dance Continues
It hasn’t even been a year since I managed to navigate the DMV gauntlet and yet, sigh, here I find myself again. My car’s registration has already expired, due to the fact that the original registration, despite not being finalized for nine months, was originally filed in January.
Normally, the DMV sends a reminder but it seems, big surprise, they forget to send one to me. Without the reminder, I don’t have the special registration identification number (RIN) I need to be able to renew my registration online or over the phone. Today, I decided to give them a call to see if I could either renew my registration without the number, or if I could get them to provide me with my RIN.
Holy cow. Talk about Brazil coming to life.
The telephone system was completely useless. Now, this is hardly surprising – all of these systems are useless for answering all but the most braindead questions. I punched through to the operator line, only to have to sit through a 30-second description of what I needed to have ready (driver’s license, license plate number), a notice that the call might be monitored, and a warning that if I gave false information, the DMV would press criminal charges. Alright, already, gimme an operator!
And then it told me there were no operators available, and suggested that my problem would probably be better served by the automated menu of snappy answers to stupid questions that I had already traversed to arrive at this point. Argh.
Not satisfied, I hit “0” and tried again. This time (after going through the 30-second warning message again) I got transferred into an actual holding queue (with hold music and everything!). And after twenty seconds, a woman’s voice came on:
“Thank you for holding. You are so important to us. Please stay on the line and then next technician will assist you. Please ask for the technician’s ID number. Thank you for allowing us to serve you and have a wonderful day.”
And then it hung up.
No, I’m not kidding…the DMV apparently considers me so important, it is not worthy of speaking to me at all.
Thinking it was a fluke, I tried yet again. And I failed yet again.
What the hell are these people smoking? I mean, how does this solve any problem for the DMV? It wastes its “customers'” time, DMV resources, and doesn’t help them get their job done any faster. No wonder people are driving around with expired registrations from four years ago on their out-of-state license plates.
Who me? Out-of-state plates? Seriously though, I finally got around to getting my license and registration… no real problems other than actually HAVINg to take a driving test. Just waiting for my plates in the mail (and waiting… and waiting…) so I’ve still got my BC plates on…
This is strictly bush-league stuff. If you want real bureaucratic problems try getting a birth certificate in the province of Ontario!
I don’t have the hour or so it would take to adequately describe the horrible mazes you must find your way through to secure a small piece of paper with five lines of information. If I did, however, you would think yourself fortunately to only have to deal with the DMV.