Thousands of DMV Customers Can’t get Licenses after Paying Early

The California Department of Motor Vehicles is having more issues as it tries to cut down on long customer wait times. Last fall, the DMV tried to cut down on the wait times at DMV offices by sending license renewal notices much earlier than usual, but the move backfired. Renewal notices were sent out by the DMV about 120 to 150 days prior to a license’s expiration. The problem with this is that the DMV’s technology could only accept payments 115 days prior to a license’s expiration. Assemblyman Jim Patterson stated the following regarding the DMV,

The impact of the DMV’s continued technology and management failures don’t surprise me anymore. Thousands of people were touched by this failure. These are paying customers, and they’re not being treated like it. We must overhaul this department starting at the top if we ever expect to see anything change.

This latest mistake by the DMV resulted in thousands of customers that paid for their license renewal earlier than 115 days prior to their license’s expiration waiting in limbo. The DMV stated that it has fixed the error and that only “a small percentage of customers” were affected. There was miscommunication because when customers paid early online or by mail, their payments appeared to have been processed, but the DMV didn’t have a record of the transaction. Some customers reported that they had to pay twice to renew their driver’s licenses. The DMV is currently being audited by the Department of Finance and Governor Gavin Newsom ordered an additional review of the DMV through the creation of a strike team in January. Hopefully the DMV is able to remedy the issues, but it will be interesting to see what the audit of the department reveals.

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