There is already “competition” in California. You can do 90% of your DMV stuff through AAA with significantly faster turn-around. And now they’ve started installing DMV Now kiosks everywhere, which makes things even easier. Yes, the big items you still have to stand in line for. But the fiddly crap you can do elsewhere.
I’ve never had a problem at my local BMV. You wait in line a bit and then your stuff is taken care of right away.
Of course, we’re not in or near a big city (we’re near one but not the closest BMV to one), and they don’t do driving tests there, so maybe our lines are a bit shorter?
Also I’ve only had to go I think 8 times now since I started driving, just to renew my license every 4 years (and 18 and 21) and once for a new car. I think plate stickers have always been done by mail in my time? And now online.
Maybe I don’t go to the BMV enough for it to be a noticeable hassle.
Differs not only by state, but also within the state. Haven’t been in there for a while, but a decade or so ago the office in the basement of the State of Ill building in downtown Chicago was astoundingly bad, while some of the suburban locations were just predictably bad.
I think this is significant. Depends on the potential employees and the types of jobs available in a specific location. When I was in IN, the DVR was GREAT. Very efficient and professional, clerks were polite and spoke clearly.
My suspicion was that in that rather rural area, the DVR jobs were in demand - decent pay/work conditions. Whereas in a more urban/industrial area, there might be more alternative jobs available that pay more, such that a lower caliber of employee is hired at the DVR.
I was very pleasantly surprised by Indiana’s BMV when we moved here last fall. I researched online what the state required and we got ReadID without even knowing we would.
The office was a good size with plenty of chairs. You get a number at the door, so there’e none of the everyone-slide-to-the-next-chair-when-the-first-in-line-gets-up that I have experienced recently. We got called very quickly and were through quite fast, especially compared to Maryland, where it all started so long ago.
I had only two reasons for disgruntlement:
Could they have given me a second to check my hair before they took the photo? Bleah!
I can’t believe I lugged my book into the office at all, because I didn’t finish a single page! I could have just had my phone!
Just to clarify: In Texas we go to the DPS(Department of Public Safety - the state police) for driver’s licenses only. You only have to go in person every other time(I think it’s to provide a more recent photo), so that’s once every twelve years.
There is a real Texas DMV, but they deal with titles and registrations, and that’s who you renew with by mail or online. If you go in person you go to your county Tax Office.
Both of the in-person processes seem to work well. The last time I renewed my license in person(~10 years ago), I went to an office near where I worked in Houston and the waiting room was huge and full, so I expected “big-city-style” delays. I was pleasantly surprised that I was in and out in thirty minutes. My personal title and registration work has always been done online or by mail, but I had to go to a tax office frequently for my former employer, and never waited in line more than about twenty minutes.
If you live where there are real waiting issues, a good strategy might be to avoid going during the first and last weeks of the month. That’s when all the procrastinators show up, and that group overlaps a lot with the biggest slow-down - people who have paperwork/understanding-the-system issues.
One factor that makes things easier it that while both are functions of DOL, driver and vehicle licenses are administered differently (as seems to be the case in Texas): driver’s licenses are handled by the DOL in their own offices, while vehicle licenses are handled by county auditors or their designated contract agencies. This reduces the volume at the DOL offices; on the other hand, about ten years ago they closed about half of them. I can’t say whether that move created a huge backlog since the only time I’ve had to go there in person was when I needed an interview to get an “Enhanced DL” (the SoW’s implementation of RealID), and I had an appointment for that.
The only other place I’ve ever encountered employees with the exact same attitude as DMV employees was in the military and it was any civilian employee who somehow thought they had rank over you for whatever reason and would threaten to call your CO over the most minor things.
And that isn’t true for salaried workers in the private sector?
I was military too and in the early 1980s morale was low, discipline was bad. But that dramatically improved in the mid-1980s.
But I came here to say I was a USPS Postal Service employee for a time. I had previously worked loading trucks for UPS, the ‘feeder trucks’ I think they call them, the large 40-foot tractor trailers and not the small brown Package Cars as they’re called, and that UPS job was fantastic. Hard working, fast moving, break a sweat and move faster, it was great when we had a good crew that worked hard together. And you could quickly see when an FNG was not going to work out. One was a Marine named Joe and, sad to say, he was a slow mover, not wanting to work. We called him Joe Mo Lasses (for moving as slow as molasses). He washed out quickly.
Anyway I later worked for the postal service and a buddy and I were frequently told to slow down, you’re making the rest of us look bad. It was unmotivating and discouraging. The place (and this was the ‘Oakland Main’ building, downtown Oakland and a huge facility) was full of slow-moving, not-really-caring people. After a time, I quit because I was disgusted with the place.
So yeah, IME the post office people had terrible attitude.
It depends in part on the culture of the place. If excellence is expected, then employees are driven to a higher quality. But if substandard performance is expected, that is often what you get as a result.
I see the old right wing trope that DMV are terrible because its gummint and not private.
What a load of tosh, nothing to do with public/private ownership. The UK equivalent is the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Agency (DVLA) It is publicly owned and although it is not perfect by any means, it is certainly nowhere near as bad as the horror stories one keeps seeing whenever US DMV are mentioned on these boards.
Much of our vehicle licensing is either carried out online, or at various post offices, so we do not tend to have DMV offices in the city as such (there are a few specific ones that deal with commercial heavy goods vehicles)
Since there are post offices on every high street in the UK it means that you do not get the long queues in single function DMV offices. Driver and vehicle licensing is largely devolved away from DVLA at point of customer contact.
The UK post office is now a private company, however that is only a fairly recent thing and used to be publicly owned. Most Post Office counters are actually situated in existing shops in an area off to one side.
The issue is not private vs public, it is simply the way it is organised and run - ours seems to be better organised and run than the US model of public services.
My own view is that the US does not seem to want to do public service well and is quite happy to have it run and managed badly - its kind of expected because public service is supposed to be EEEEVIL and SOCIALIST, but these are not proper reasons for an inefficient service at all, they are in fact excuses for not taking the time and the trouble to manage and run public services properly.
Your problem is not private vs public, its the fact that somehow the US cannot get its shit together to run public services, is this because it suits your nation’s psyche to prove somehow that public = evil socialism and good services somehow = private capitalism?
I think a lot of people just have sour grapes because like every other government agency, it’s not run like a for-profit customer-oriented enterprise. By that I mean that if you’re going into a shop of some kind, the staff have an incentive to kiss your ass and make your whole shopping experience convenient and pleasant, and make sure you got what you were coming in for. Because if they don’t, there’s every chance you’ll go to the other shop selling the same product nearby, and they’ll lose out on business.
Government agencies don’t have that pressure- there’s not a substitute for the state DMV. Yeah, you can go to a different DMV location next time, but the DMV overall doesn’t lose business, and nobody really cares if you go to one DMV over the other.
So the workers are professional and do their jobs, but the motivation at all levels is basically doing the job well, but without the same emphasis on making the customer happy. Lots of people are really used to getting their asses kissed in situations like that and get torqued when it doesn’t happen, or if they have to wait in a long line, or whatever.
In offices which are understaffed (which it seems are most of them), the waits are long and many of the customers are impatient and frustrated by the time they reach a DMV agent. This may be part of the reason some DMV agents have a bad attitude – I’d probably be grumpy too if a bunch of jerks were yelling at me all day about things that I have no control over.
There have been plenty of Dopers who have said that they are at work to collect a paycheck and get out on time. Which for a lot of jobs is the rational attitude to have.
Those who think all private workers bust their butt and all government workers are slackers must be suffering from major confirmation bias.
I took scr4’s post to question why does the logic of Annie’s post apply only to government workers? Can’t it also apply to private sector workers? Which of course it can.
Total slackers, or totally busting butt – but there’s a good middle ground. People with a passion for excellence but who pace themselves reasonably, stepping it up to bust butt when needed, and dialing their effort back at slower times.
Yeah, 50 agencies with different rules and procedures is never going to be as efficient as one. The Federal government could give them a limited access to the passport database though; speeding things up for 42% of people would still help them and reduce the queues for the rest… unless the people wanting the Real ID are mostly those without passports?
No. I don’t even know if you can go in person. I expect it would work the same as when I renewed my passport: have a friend take a photo of you according to the specifications (white background, neutral expression, no face coverings etc) and upload it to the site. Presumably at some point a human will compare it to the old photo to confirm it’s the same person, and they can compare the biometrics automatically.
For a first passport or provisional driving licence you have to do it the old school way: go to one of those photo booths and then have someone responsible sign the back of the pictures, then send them in by post along with a paper form and whatever ID they require. So it takes longer overall but you don’t have to take time off work or wait around somewhere.
At least it sounds like things have improved in most states, even if it’s still not perfect.
PS. Thanks for the explanation of the Real ID, I was wondering what the difference was.
Alisha. Hmmm.
When I initially got my driver’s license an entire day was required for the process because everything was done in person in lines, notarized, in triplicate, etc., and if you forgot anything you had to start over in the line. Suffice it to say, people regularly forgot something so the lines were endless and full of frustration in the face of utterly indifferent DMV workers. The building was located in downtown Harrisburg so you had to pay a handsome sum to park, which added insult to injury.
Fortunately, and I do mean it when I say that, the building caught on fire and was condemned, and later torn down and replaced. The DMV was relocated a mile out of downtown with easier access and free parking, and the more modern facility allowed them to take full advantage of technology, using a ticket system to direct people to the proper counter with the proper forms. Since the move I have never waited more than 5 minutes when I’ve gone in person.
The joke still remains, though. When the sloths in the DMV took the entire day to service a request in Zootopia I laughed until there were tears in my eyes because I remember the bad old days, whereas my son had no idea why it was so funny.
This is going to sound very strange to you - but I work for a state government agency and it typically costs money for my agency to have access to another agency’s database.* And it often costs per person - so I have access to DMV records but my coworkers don’t. I don’t imagine the Feds would do it for free ( if they would even be willing to give access) or that they would give access to thousands of driver’s license clerks.
I would imagine they are- there’s little reason to get a Real ID if you already have a passport.
This will never happen in the US, not unless you mean something more specific than I imagine by “someone responsible”. Somebody official is going to have to see that the person who took the written/road test is the same person depicted in the photo ( that will be on the learner’s permit and ultimately used for the license in my state), that the person who resembles the photo submitted with the passport application is the same one who signed it in front of the passport agent ( with a signature that resembles the signature on some other ID) and so on. It’s never going to be a process where my sister can send in her photo (signed by a friend) with an application in my name, my birth certificate etc for a first drivers license/passport. Renewals are different.
- It’s got to do with budgets- one part of my agency makes office furniture and has a print shop. When I order furniture or business cards or forms- money flows from my part of the agency to the part that produces the furniture and does the printing.
The one by my house is great. Never had a single problem and I’m in and out of there in no time. I think that probably varies by locale and might be an outdated reputation.