DVLA - PRAAAAAIIIIIISE THEM!

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

This probably isn't a view shared by all, but I reckon DVLA are pretty bloody good.

 

 

 

- Taxing a car has never been easier. Online, direct debit so you don't get fucked for one lot. Being able to tax a car or sorn it in 3-4 minutes as and when the mood takes you. I may tax a car for a month, I might not. Did you get caught out during the changeover? Well, it was a pretty simple changeover tbh. Even I managed to avoid ballsing it up.

 

- You can get through on the phone easily. I mean really easily.

 

- Transfer numbers online. No more pissing around at local DVLA offices.

 

- SORN. They send you a reminder, not a nasty fine.

 

- They send out notes to say they've received a V62 and give you the day the V5 will be sent out.

 

- And other stuff.

 

 

 

In my opinion, DVLA has gone from a massive blundering nightmare with various sub offices into a pretty lean and efficient set up. It's not perfect of course, but it's improved beyond all recognition in the last 2 years. It may even get better.

[Cavcraft]

-1

 

Try and get them to pay the correct person when they refund car tax after you've sold a car. I heard recently this whole taxing on-line caper has cost them millions, which pleases me greatly after the way they've robbed me recently.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

How so? Direct debit - car sold, payments stopped. That's how I'd do it.

[D Spares & Tyres]

What was wrong with going into a post office?

 

I've never done online taxing, doesn't seem any point unless you live a long way from a post office.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

-2 still haven't got the payments back they kept taking 2 months after selling car. Plus they told me last week I was starting a new DD for a car that I've been paying each month for ages, it will be interesting to see if they take 2 payments on Saturday.

Tried to do plate transfer online,bcouldnt because new car had been untaxed for a month in 2012.

Threatened me , not new owner with fine for car I sold and transferred on line 3 months previously then stopped DD when I realised they hadn't .

DVLA Bunch of cunts. Bring back local offices.

[HH-R]

They haven't fluffed up anything for me in the past two years which is definitely an improvement, though I've only bought and sold three cars.

 

Direct debit etc is more convenient too, but charging more to pay monthly is a shabby trick.

[R9UKE]

I agree on the number plate transfer. It was a complete faf before. I went on to start the ball rolling with the plate on my Avantime and ended up paying and having the new number in literally one minute. The new V5 Arrived a few days later. Brilliant.

[Squire_Dawson]

In my limited dealings with them when the local offices were still open, I always found them helpful and haven't had any problems with them.

[Matt]

but charging more to pay monthly is a shabby trick.

 

Insurers do it too. It's just a thinly hidden scheme to take advantage of those who can't afford to make a lump sum payment.

[bigfella2]

This place ain't what it used to be.......

[richardmorris]

What was wrong with going into a post office?

I've never done online taxing, doesn't seem any point unless you live a long way from a post office.

There's no guarantee that the post office will retain the contract with the dvla. This is privitisation remember.

[Richard]

The new system has complicated things massively, costs the driver more and apparently costs the state more. Good work!

[Pillock]

Insurers do it too. It's just a thinly hidden scheme to take advantage of those who can't afford to make a lump sum payment.

Well, it's more that they use a credit firm so they get paid instantly, and you owe the credit firm the cash. They don't work for free, so you pay more.

 

You can't really pay monthly for your insurance, what if you have a massive crash the day after you take it out? You'd be paying for the rest of the year so 50% of customers would just sack off the payments and face debt collectors (an excuse for raising costs for everyone else) and the other 50% would moan bitterly, forgetting the fact their accident costs have been met.

[wuvvum]

I have to say I've been quite impressed with the DVLA's performance recently.  V5Cs have been coming through promptly (sometimes in less than a week), the last two people I have spoken to on the phone in Swansea have been helpful and knowledgeable (although I realise this can be the luck of the draw), and they sent me, FOC, a letter confirming the change of keeper details for the Mondeo after the new owner got a PCN - they even included a photocopy of the old logbook with the new keeper's details filled in.

 

They have been a cunch of bunts in the past, mind.

[overrun]

All hail the DVLA! It allowed me to reclaim a number plate from a car I scrapped (shhh) about a decade ago, and have kept SORN, since.

 

It took about a minute, as R9UKE said.

 

I have bought and sold a few cars this year, and the V5c and no longer registered keeper acknowledgement letters come back sooner than ever before.

 

That reminds me, just got a log book back today.

Time to SORN!

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

What was wrong with going into a post office?

 

 

 

Er.........

 

1. Get in car.

 

2. Drive to post office

 

3. Queue up.

 

4. Fill out form if you haven't got reminder.

 

5. Pay 200 sheets in one go.

 

 

---------------------- or--------------------

 

 

1. Switch on computer.

 

2. Tax online.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

The new system has complicated things massively

 See post above

[fairkens]

Insurers do it too. It's just a thinly hidden scheme to take advantage of those who can't afford to make a lump sum payment.

Don't know about the doovla but insurers need a consumer credit licence to pay by instalments, so increased dollar - either that or get a third party to provide and then you're paying their profits - think flux do that

[Mr A Lawrence]

I taxed my jagwah in about 3 clicks.

 

Compared with about 40mins in the post office last year.

[Richard]

I taxed my jagwah in about 3 clicks.

 

Compared with about 40mins in the post office last year.

 

You do know it was possible to do that before?

 

You did well to get it in three clicks. I have never found a DVLA service at the same web address twice. The process of re-taxing a car that you already own hasn't really changed, except that you now just have to have blind faith that it has worked.

[twosmoke300]

Any system that helps you avoid the miserable unhelpful twats that work in post orifices has to be a plus

[Richard]

But you could do that before.

[406V6]

They completely f**ked up my change of V5 when I moved house this year. They didn`t reply, then claimed my old V5 was lost in the post. But I had tracking that confirmed delivery. To my great satisfaction they had to back down. I had to fill in another form for lost V5 and received the new one three weeks later. Without the tracking their incompetence would have cost me £25. Result !

[twosmoke300]

I still think they have a special qualification in being awkward and miserable

[purplebargeken]

Can't say that I have had issues of late. Just filled out the change of keeper thing for Rover online. Easypeasy.

[twosmoke300]

Bit of a chicken and egg thing then I suppose

[LessThanEqual]

 

 

- They send out notes to say they've received a V62 and give you the day the V5 will be sent out.

 

Bought my car in late August and I never got a message to say when I'd get the V5.

[andrew e]

I suspect the Rev got laid this afternoon, and this post was in the "having a fag" moment.

 

It's the only possible explanation.

[outlaw118]

I have to say, having just done the whole shebang, it was really quite painless.

 

Got the Logbook for teh Alfa after about 12 days, then i declared SORN. Five days later, set up Direct Debit for tax. Sorted.

 

 

Sold Seat 29/11/15, sent off yellow slip, got a letter 10 days later saying i was no longer the registered keeper, and about 3 days after that the tax refund turned up. 

 

The main point here I think, is that they are now doing what is expected of them - whereas before, they were so unspeakably shit, like Mr Hirstcabs says, an improvement to mediocre seems like a quantum leap!

[rantingYoof]

There are jobsworths everywhere, in every sector, of course, and there's no excuse for being a nit-picky unhelpful sod, either through laziness or just through resentment of life in general.

 

But having spent 8 years being a public-service/sector hatred-dartboard, I must offer a bit of a defence, even if it's a limp-wristed one.

 

Over the last many years, successive Governments of red and blue flavour have slashed and hacked the DVLA to the point where the term "skeleton crew" is generous. On top of this, in public sector/public service organisations such as the DVLA, it is becoming common for new-fangled ways of working to be introduced, and one of these is LEAN.

 

Some of you may have heard of this - it originated in the car-manufacturing trade, and if your business is a production line and your sole intention is to make profits in the quickest, most efficient way possible then it's bloody marvellous.

If you are a public sector organisation simply tasked with providing a customer service then it's less than good, because there shouldn't be a time limit on making sure a customer is happy/not in crisis/knows what they wanted to know at the start of the enquiry.

 

One of the biggest wastes of time in the eyes of this system are phone calls. Want to know why the person at the end of the phone has just blagged there way into ending the call, or seems like they want to hang-up or move the call on? It's because they've got targets to meet. Five minutes for a call, any more than that, we want to know exactly what you were doing to justify this when you could have been doing something else.

 

You may wander why, if people are being hauled off their phone calls so quickly, things still fuck up and your V5 doesn't have the correct info on it, or they simply never respond. The other part of LEAN is pure beaurocracy. When implemented in an environment made mostly of paperwork and paperclips, LEAN becomes about assessing incoming workload, comparing it to the workload that arrived yesterday, analysing the total resource hours that are available, and then having a meeting before the work is commenced to tell everyone that there is work to do.

 

If the numbers on the chart are green, then ALL IS WELL. If they are red, well, manipulate them so they are GREEN so ALL IS WELL AGAIN.

 

I wish I were bull-shitting and I would dearly love to be the demented tin-foil hat-wearing freak in the corner, but I've lived this myself (not at the DVLA, but as a civil servant). I have genuinely had the words "We do not have time to be helpful" said to me. As a civil servant, it did not compute.

 

All I'm saying is, the next time you feel cross at being put on hold, passed around a bit, or it seems like the person at the end of the phone is a bit harassed or otherwise trying to get rid of you, try to remember the above, before you go into full rage mode.

 

If you voted for, or are attracted to the idea of a tiny public sector, with most services privatised or run like they are a privatised for-profit service (to give you maximum VALUE FOR MONEY!), you are living your dream.

 

Although if the chap/chapette at the end of the phone really are being an irritating dick, give them hell.