The last time I had to go to the PA DMV there was a “NO CASH ACCEPTED” sign. Of course, I had a pocket full of cash. Talking with the guy at the counter, it finally clicked that they didn’t trust their employees with money.
The stories you guys are telling are so different from my personal experience in Canada that I once started a thread, asking why the DMV was so hated in the US. I thought it was just a stereotype from movies. Turned out I was wrong. 
It’s not a big deal here in Canada, at least in my province. You see, our socialist governments have harnessed the power of the free market, and privatised the issuing of driving licences and vehicle plates to the insurance brokers. To renew your licence or your registration, you go to your local insurance office, which handles it all, lickety-split. I don’t think I’ve ever waited more than about five or ten minutes, and that’s been when there’s been a lot of people in the office. It’s just another product that they sell, like home insurance.
I happened to be in the insurance office reviewing my plates one day when an American who had moved to Canada came in to get a driving licence, based on his US licence (from Colorado, I think). It took him less than 10 minutes, start to finish. As he was leaving, he said, “You folks up here may be socialists, but you’re damned efficient ones.”
I don’t think I was actually in the offices of SGI itself to renew a driving licence until my late 20s. Prior to that, I always went to an insurance broker. But, when I went to SGI, there was no difference in service; bit of a line-up usually, if you went at noon, but in and out in ten minutes.
The only thing bad about the Gettysburg office is that they don’t accept cash! :smack:
This is all so weird to this Brit. We don’t go to the offices of the DVLA at all - it’s all done online and by post. If you need to pick up a form for any reason, you just go to the Post Office.
Actually qualifying for a full driving licence is another matter - our driving tests are very tough and few pass first time (I did :D)
This prompted me to look the first time pass rates up - the past few years it has been around 50% for males and 43% for females. So yeah, it’s not straightforward (I didn’t 
)
In Montreal, it can take a half hour up to a couple hours depending on time of day and of month. The clerks are generally quite friendly (and bilingual); it is just that there aren’t enough of them. You used to have to go every four years (now lengthened to 8) for a new photo (and you got a new medicare care at the same time), but everything else (including vehicle registration–the plates are undated) can be done at your bank or online. The photos are digital and automatically printed onto the licence and medicare cards.
Nearly 50 years ago, I got a licence and plates in the Swiss canton of Fribourg. It was trivial. There was some sort of driver’s test; I no longer remember much about it, but they basically accepted my Quebec licence. The licence I got had no expiration date and so is presumably still valid. But even with my poor French, they were extremely patient and pleasant.
In Ohio you can renew your license plates and get new tags just by sending in a form and a check, or you can do it online. You have to get a new driver license every four years, though, including a new picture. My dealings with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles have been just fine - the staff is almost always efficient and pleasant, in my experience. I always take a book along, though, because sometimes the lines can be long. Once you’re dealing with staff, though, it’s all good.
As for the U.S. Postal Service, though…
When I moved to Maryland, I tried to get a license at one of the Baltimore DMVs- it was the closest one to me, about twenty minutes away. I got there early in the morning, about fifteen minutes before they opened up, and the line was out into the parking lot. It took me two hours just to talk to someone, and then I found out that I hadn’t brought some important piece of paper, so I had to give up for the day.
The next day, on the recommendation of a coworker, I drove about 45 minutes out into the country to go to a smaller, more remote DMV. I was in and out in less than fifteen minutes. It was a complete pleasure.
It’s not that the DMV is inherently inefficient or maliciously lazy- it’s that some locations are underfunded.
Texas, and everything is done at the county level here but the licences aren’t county specific. The line in the city is usually several hours long, and it is worth the time to travel to an outlying county courthouse, where you may only need to wait behind one or two people.
In Dubai, UAE it took me less than 15 minutes to convert my Nevada license to a UAE license. Super easy and efficient.
In Maryland we don’t have the DMV, we have the somewhat unfortunately named “MVA,” and while I’ve had some horrific experiences there in the past, the system is increasingly going to online services. In fact, there are a lot of services you can only do online, like getting a replacement license; if you show up at the MVA to get a replacement license, they actually walk you over to a computer so you can do it online.
I’ve breezed through various interactions with the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec. The outlet I favour is large and often busy but well-designed for maximum throughput. My last visit, to get my license photo updated, took about 20 minutes.
Yes, altho is used to be bad, now it’s OK. The fact that many drivers can do many things at AAA takes quite a few people out of the CA DMV.
If you think about it, it’s the same in the USA. You only have to change plates if you change states, and many US states are about the same size as European nations.
My best DMV experience was in a small-town Ohio location. Very few people were there and everyone was beyond nice and accommodating. Utah was okay, California was okay, just very, very busy.
My worst (and continuing worst) experiences are here in NJ. I had a bizarre issue when I registered an old car a few years ago; I had the title in hand, but the clerk insisted that there was a $15,000 lien on the car that hadn’t been cleared and she needed to see a “release of lien” from the financing institution. Really? Someone recently financed an 18-year-old BMW that I had just bought for $2500?
At any rate, she needed a letter from the (alleged) financier in order for me to register the car. So I, um, provided a letter from an (alleged) financier.
And which practically speaking you don’t have to do anyway until the car’s registration comes up for renewal where you’d have had some interaction anyway. You might want to immediately change plates for insurance reasons.
In general some comments lead back to the political/social view that US states are like the subdivsions of highly centralized countries (or if not why aren’t they?). But they really aren’t (nor are Canadian provinces, German lander are somewhat real entities, some other countries’ subdivisions are just for the administrative convenience of the central govt, it runs a wide gamut), and it’s not obvious the general welfare would be promoted if they were. Which on the US side (as opposed to foreigners’ view of the US) tends to get back to raw politics: policies one side or the other thinks it can impose or resist better if the states retain or lose more of their independent status. And sometimes the two sides are inconsistent about this, varying their position by issue.
But for car registration agencies, at this point I’d rather have NJ’s much improved one than risk it being a dysfunctional federal organization like the VA (practically everyone agrees it is) or arguably the USPS (though it’s tended to become more of a partisan issue how people view the USPS), just hoping it was a non-dysfunctional federal agency.
High 90’s% of the potential problem with state run car/driver registration is avoided by the fact all states recognize one another’s drivers licenses and registrations while in force. Again in general you only have to change them when you’d otherwise have had to renew them in the original state, albeit that might mean showing up in person to do something you could have done by mail or online if you’d remained in the same state.
Once you are established in a state, then most things do not require a visit to the DMV-equivalent (although at some point I will make an appointment with the Arizona DMV to go in and get my driver’s license “upgraded” to a Real-ID compatible one). However, moving into a state with existing vehicles is where things can get painful.
Worst experience was when my wife moved to Massachusetts (I already was living there). She had purchased he car 6 years earlier while living in Schenectady, NY but from a dealer in Springfield, MA. The MA dealer gave her a transit pass so she could drive the car to MY and register it there (normally the dealer would handle in-state registration of a new car). She paid no MA sales tax, and full NY sales tax when she registered.
Fast forward 6 years. We go to the Massachusetts RMV to register the car. One of the questions is the name of the dealership where the car was purchased. Being young and foolish, we told the truth - the dealership in Springfield, MA. The clerk said we owed sales tax (and penalty!) before we could register the car. On the original purchase price, not the current value of the car. Showed proof of sales tax paid in NY (higher than MA), didn’t matter. Spent 15 minutes arguing to no avail.
Solution? Went to a different RMV office, filled out the form again, said the car had been purchased from a dealer in NY. No problem.
That’s actually not what it means, though. Once the lien is recorded it stays on until a release is received. Someone financed a new BMW 18 years ago , no one sent the paperwork to actually remove the lien when the loan was paid off and the seller didn’t give you the lien release when you bought the car.
Car registration isn’t a thing that expires in the EU, so it doesn’t need renewing. You post off a form registering that you’re the new keeper if you get a new car, and (at some point, normally, for simpler insurance if nothing else) change it if you move to a different country. That’s it.
It can actually be quite complicated if you do try and re-register in a non-standard situation; an Irish friend of mine was given her parents’ old car, which they brought over on the ferry to England and left at hers.
It sounded like a good plan, to get a free little runabout car. Unfortunately she wound up in some ridiculous catch 22 which was something like she couldn’t get it taxed and tested for roadworthiness (called an MOT) because it wasn’t registered in the UK so wasn’t on their database, but couldn’t get it registered to her because it didn’t have an MOT, so it wasn’t road legal.
The DVLA were reportedly utterly useless at dealing with it, and repeatedly sent wrong forms and told her different, conflicting information about what she needed to do. It spent a whole year sitting in her garage, until she finally decided the DVLA hadn’t the faintest idea how to sort it and were basically just waiting for her to give up. She wound up just getting rid of it. Scrapped it, I think.
Except that I was the fourth owner and the guy I bought it from had purchased the car, for cash, at a police auction. It had previously been registered once in NY and twice in NJ (thrice with me).* It’s difficult to believe it was reg’d three times previously and a lien suddenly appeared for nine times what the car was worth. I had title in hand and loan companies usually don’t give an actual, physical paper title until a car is paid off. I think it was a grouchy clerk who made a mistake and didn’t want to fix it.
*I know the history because it occurred to me that the car may have been stolen due to this weirdness and I researched the title (it wasn’t).