I went to the social security office to get a copy of my card and that place makes the DMV look like a 5 star hotel. A baby was crying and some guy started yelling at the mother and the mother started yelling back. It’s like being in one of the levels of hell.
Serious question: Why the need to show up in person to renew a license? Mail in a passport sized photo with the renewal fee, wait 1-3 weeks and get your new license in the mail?
Hell, why do these licenses expire anyways? In fact, why do we even need drivers licenses? We got by just fine for thousands of years without horse riding licenses or carriage licenses.
Of course, these self-important fuckwits who like to control our everyday lives might have to move on to other things like banning smoking or fatty foods, but they seem to be doing well with that.
The only problem I can see is that since I don’t smoke, and rarely eat fatty foods anymore, they don’t get the chance to sneer at me personally like they do at the DMV. So that must be it. 
I’ve dealt with both Alberta and Saskatchewan “DMVs”, and never had more than a 10 minute wait in either case.
Here is Family Guy’s take on the DMV. (Hulu video…might not work outside the US)
I’ve lived in several states, and in the ones I’ve lived long enough in to renew a license I didn’t need to show up - just send in my check. I think we’re getting old enough for eye tests, though. My wife had retinal surgery since her last renewal, which is why she had to go. Don’t have to go to renew your registration either.
So you know, in Florida if you have one of the hard plastic licenses (as opposed to the old laminated ones with the renewal stickers on the back), then you don’t need to go to the DHSMV: DDL* to get your license renewed. You can do it by mail or online. I haven’t been to the DMV since I got my license after my 21st birthday and as long as my appearance doesn’t change significantly I won’t have to go back.
*Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles: Division of Driver Licenses
Oh, we’re doing the “The people who gripe about this thing also gripe about the other thing” bit. Terrific, but I’ve never griped about taxes once in my entire life. The state can have my PIN if it would mean the DMV employees weren’t the same clowns who got fired from Burger King.
Agreed. Cretins abound. The only thing that makes it more insufferable when DMV staff (or retail workers, or whoever) have bad attitudes is nobody in line is being paid to be courteous… although they should be courteous for free, anyway.
The Family Guy bit is hilarious.
I can’t. My renewal form gets spit back with the notation “you must appear in person to renew your license”. :mad:
I think it used to be a lot worse, when you were required to do more things in person. It was a vicious cycle, the customers get angry because they’re standing in line for 45 minutes to get a 5 minute job done, and they can’t get it done because they filled out the wrong form. The workers get angry because they’re dealing with pissed off people all day, and they’re not jumping at the chance to be helpful, they just want your ugly mug to go somewhere else.
I haven’t had too many problems in recent years, though it’s odd to think that waiting 30 minutes to drop off plates and get a receipt is considered good service. If I went to a regular business and waited 30 minutes for something like that I’d be right pissed off.
Alas, we don’t seem to be in the majority. At least not in California, where I hear this kind of thing all the time.
Where I live, the percentage of friendly state workers is at least as high as that of people working at Macy’s, and a lot higher than the kids who work in your average mall store or at Lucky’s. I’m not surprised that people have bad experiences at the DMV - except for a kid getting her first license, no one really wants to be there.
We have a similar system in the suburbs of Chicago now as well. It’s also funny to see the extremely “old” (in computer standards) dot matrix printers spitting out forms - slowly - when compared to the high-tech photo system, number “board”, etc.
The first time I got an Illinois driver’s license, I appreciated the wait time as I hadn’t realized I needed to take a written test, even though I had a valid Wisconsin DL. (This was before the popularity of the Internet to look up such facts.) I grabbed a “Rules of the Road” booklet from my spot in the line, and used the waiting time to study up.
The time before last in renewal, I got a “safe driver” privilege and got to mail in for a renewal sticker. You don’t get out of in-person renewal every time with that, though, and Illinois is changing its DL style anyway, so this summer I went in for a new license. I brought a little makeup bag to spruce up a bit before the picture, and brought it in with me to do while waiting. I didn’t have enough time! I went from 3-person line (held up for a minute or two with a person who moved back into the state and had no current proof of address on her to confirm where she lived) to get my number, to being called up as I was walking away from the first desk, confirm my info, down the desk to pay, sit down and wait for the picture, get a bit of blush on, and my name’s called.
My only gripes were: they no longer take Visa (WTF?), and when I entered the place and asked at a desk how much a standard license renewal was because I only had a $20 (it was $10 I think), I was told “that’s next door, this is for vehicles.” Geez, please just tell me, or tell me that you’re not sure, before moving me along. I know you get idiots, but you’re the one who wanted my attention right away while I was looking around for some kind of information. But that’s minor.
When I moved to Miami, Florida, I had a doozy of an experience.
First, it’s so busy and understaffed that you need an appointment. Walk-ins are accepted, but only taken if all current appointments are handled. Saturday appointments were available… but there was a month+ wait to get that appointment. Many times you need the service sooner than that, so you have to walk-in. So if you had a job that you couldn’t miss - and I did - you had to do a Saturday walk-in. People would line up at 6am for an 8am opening.
Internet/Online services were non-existent. The only way to get the info on what you needed was to go to DMV. I had to do a walk-in as my car insurance was about to expire. So I wait my 4+ hours to transfer all my stuff from NJ to FL. I brought everything I thought I needed… insurance, title, NJ license, birth certificate, etc. I was trying to do two things. 1) Get a FL license so I could establish residency for school*, and 2) get my car registered in FL.
I get to see someone and I am told that to get my FL license, I can’t have a car that is registered out-of-state. So the first step is to get the car registered. I present paperwork, and I ask for the requisite forms. I’m informed that registration requires license plates, and that those were privatized and had to be obtained through a “Tag Agency.” Fairness laws prevented them from recommending one, but there was always one next door.
So I go over to the Tag Agency. There I’m told that I need car insurance… and that NJ insurance isn’t good enough. I need insurance from a FL underwriter. I had a major national company insuring me, but apparently the policy needed to be specifically underwritten in FL. 6+ hours at this point and I call it a day. I figure I’ll go home and contact insurers during business hours.
When I finally got around to calling the local office of the Big Insurer, I was told they weren’t writing new policies in FL. It didn’t matter if I was already a customer in NJ. No new policies. You see, the insurance industry had just taken a HUGE hit from Hurricane Andrew a few years prior. All the majors had pulled out. So I finally calling Little Guy Big Price insurance. Luckily for me, the rate didn’t seem bad because NJ is so expensive. Unluckily for me, I needed to have a valid FL driver’s license to get the policy.
Yes, that’s right. To get the license, I needed insurance. To get the insurance, I needed a license. I waited (again) at DMV the next Saturday and plead my case. They didn’t care. The rules were the rules. They didn’t see it as impossible because their requirement was just that I have a tag. The privatized tag agency’s rules were its business, not theirs. The actual requirement was that I couldn’t have an out-of-state car in-state and get a FL license. So I eventually just perjured the form. I signed an affidavit claiming that I did not have a car with out-of-state tags in the state. Then I took the license, got the insurance, got the tag, got the registration, and was finally legal. And every time I had to go wait 4-8 hours at the DMV.
So why do I hate the DMV? Basically because of the stupidity. The only legal way for me to stay legal was to drive 400 miles to Georgia and then walk back to Florida to the nearest DMV, and then walk back to Georgia, get my car and drive the 400 miles back to Miami.
- I wasn’t trying to get one over on the state. I had dropped out of a private university, moved out on my own, had a job, etc. I just needed to get my license as it was one of the forms of ID needed for state universities to accept you for in-state rates. You still had to wait a year or two.
If you need a driver’s license in Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada or Virginia, better not smile for the photo. Smiling for your photo has been banned.
Being from New Jersey, you shouldn’t have been surprised. When I moved to NJ in 1980 they weren’t writing new policies either, because no fault was so screwed up. I only got it because I had State Farm in Louisiana, and they wrote for current customers. I was pretty much locked in, but I don’t think I spent any more than I would have if I could have shopped around.
Reporting in from my visit to the version of the DMV here in Minnesota - Got my license renewed - eye test, photo etc… it took less than 5 minutes from leaving car to entering car.
There were 3 clerks, no other customers, and it was, all in all, a most pleasant experience.
For most every DMV transaction you need several documents:
DL: proof of age, proof of residency, proof of ID.
License plate: proof of insurance, proof of ownership, emissions certificate.
They accept cash or checks, but not credit cards.
About 1 in 8 people researches these requirements and comes prepared. The ones that don’t bitch at the clerks, refuse to accept this, plead, occasionally cry, etc. They eventually come back with the required documents, and continue to harass the clerks. Thr stupider the individual, the surer they are that they know the rules better than the clerk.
The clerks have to deal with such assholery day in and day out. They become jaded and surley.
If you greet the surley clerk with a smile, passible grammer, a civil toungue, and a well organized file of documents, they frequently beome fairly pleasant people to deal with.
Years ago I bought a used car that was jointly owned by two people. They had titled the car in the manner of “John Doe and Jane Roe.” In my state, that required both owners to sign the title (at the time before a notary.)
They both did sign the title before a notary, but each owner used a different color pen. When I took the title to the appropriate government office to be processed, a surly clerk refused to accept it, saying both owners’ signatures had to be with the same pen. The clerk insisted the owners to get a new title and sign it using the same pen. That added hours of standing in lines and weeks of delay for us to complete the sale.
There was, of course, no law that requires both signatures to be in the same pen. The clerk simply did it as a power-trip. I was too young and unsophisticated at the time to realize, so I didn’t complain. But that clerk’s attitude is why people hate the DMV.
I wish. The last time I had to deal with the PA DMV, I specifically brought cash. It was unacceptable. I was pissed. Cash unacceptable? :dubious:
Since the taxes are high right now they should be getting great service by that logic.
I tried to find out on their web site and then by phone if they took cash. There was no way to find out for Wisconsin except by going there and asking. The phone system didn’t say anywhere on the menu and you couldn’t talk to a person at all.