Useless DVLA - Rant

[mirach]

also forgot the other one
I have a large van and decided to put my private plate on it. no problem and docs come back with a new tax disc showing new reg no, ideal, so I thought! I then receive a £100 fine for not having insurance on the old registration ,
all sorted with a single letter but completely incompetent,,

[thomas45]

Re the first post on this subject, I was in the middle of my rant about it when the site went down for maint. Anyway I couldnt go back over all that without getting into an angry mood again about the DVLA. Suffice to say when I first read the post from PTR I thought it was myself that wrote it. I also got my S type just a week after that and suffered the exact same nonsense.
They are supposed to send the refund automatically ( according to their information on the V5) but when this did not happen I then phoned them on Jan 5th. Eventually I received a letter on the 24th of February stating that because I didnt inform them til 5th Jan there would be no refund.
I acquired the car on the 16th Dec so the details were in the system and the tax remaining on the car I traded in should have been automatically refunded. Perhaps I should not have been so quick to tax the new car. Thinking about it now I remember another previous disaster they made some years back. I had bought an XJ40 and sent off the green log book to have it registered in my name which would have been added to the record of the five previous owners. ( you guessed it )
They sent me back the flimsy paper thing we now have . So I phoned them and asked for the green log book to be returned as it was an important part of the vehicle history. The response was '' Oh no you cant get it we have burned it'' Well I HAVE gone over it all again and more so end of rant.

[PTR200Jag]

And another DVLA useless cockup...
Just sorned the XK8 to do some work on it and so I can get some use out of the rest of my fleet ( ) for the summer.

Applied for SORN at 8.30pm tonight, 30th May...


and it comes back with a start date for SORN of the 1st May.... so now it looks like the car has been off the road a month already... just hope it hasn't been clocked by the law in the intervening days !!

Are the DVLA IT programmers really on this planet? and why haven't the DVLA hierarchy CHECKED these system outputs?

This really isn't good enough, they commit fraud and take double tax on cars bought and sold in the same month and now they can't even get the dates on their systems to read in real time !

[thomas45]

Think this ongoing incompetence is a job for Ann Robinson of Watchdog fame.
That is apart from the issue of motorists being ripped off. So what is the best way to get some action in that direction? Is a protest rally required ? (March on Downing Street) signatures or what?
Then there is the issue of the POTHOLES, what is our money being spent on?

[J44EAG]

Seemingly a smug £7 or 10% salary increase for your cuddly MP.

38 Degrees is a good site for seeing what our leaders are up to behind the scenes. They will often champion a cause.

Governments and Government Agencies are not bound by decent quality assurance regimes. I once asked a Government Official who was blocking and stopping what I wanted to do, although one of his colleagues was in agreement with me. When I asked what quality assurance was in place, I was told they did not need it. I asked why that should be. The reply was that as The Government, they didn`t need quality assurance. My reply was that it was precisely because they WERE the Government, that quality assurance WAS needed!

Obfuscation rules ok as long as you are a Civil Servant.

Mike

[Orkney]

Yep, I'm with PTR and thomas45 on this one, it's about time we all united against these Highwaymen, I wonder what would happen if we all declared SORN on our cars and bikes at the same time and then continued to use them? I doubt that their computers could handle the inundation and the privatised Post Office would keel over under the mountain of fines letters handed out. I realise that the JEC would not condone such anarchy but like many I have a catalogue of stories of complete incompetence and downright skulduggery perpetrated by the DVLA. Who gave anyone the right to change the name from Road Fund Licence to Vehicle Excise Duty anyway?

Come to think of it, who handed out the right for the Government to have a fair referendum on entering the Common Market all those years ago and then by stealth, change it beyond all recognition to the present interfering bunch of freeloaders?

Must go lie down now, all rants used up for today and 4 hours remaining!
Ian

[steve_m]

But wouldn't you feel guilty by declaring SORN and then driving on the public highway? Apart from the obvious implications to your insurance isn't that slightly beyond naughty/
And is overloading an obviously incapable system the right way to go?
I remember all the bitching, whining, moaning and protesting that went on when we were all forced to wear seatbelts; do you even think about it now when you step in to the car?
Remember all the massed motorbike rallies when they were forced to wear crash helmets? Ever see a rider without a skid lid?
Give it time.
I don't feel the slightest bit guilty if I accidentally run a cyclist into a ditch/hedge/reservoir because he is perfectly protected by his scratch proof lycra and crash hat made out of recycled (sic) hospital bed pans.
It's a new system and so far I have had no problems whatsoever which includes buying 2 cars, phoning them up asking if I need to declare SORN if the MOT has expired (you don't, as long as it is off the road), and generally easey peasey. Maybe I am just lucky.
Doucement mes amis, doucement.

[PTR200Jag]

But wouldn't you feel guilty by declaring SORN and then driving on the public highway? Apart from the obvious implications to your insurance isn't that slightly beyond naughty/
And is overloading an obviously incapable system the right way to go?
I remember all the bitching, whining, moaning and protesting that went on when we were all forced to wear seatbelts; do you even think about it now when you step in to the car?
Remember all the massed motorbike rallies when they were forced to wear crash helmets? Ever see a rider without a skid lid?
Give it time.
I don't feel the slightest bit guilty if I accidentally run a cyclist into a ditch/hedge/reservoir because he is perfectly protected by his scratch proof lycra and crash hat made out of recycled (sic) hospital bed pans.
It's a new system and so far I have had no problems whatsoever which includes buying 2 cars, phoning them up asking if I need to declare SORN if the MOT has expired (you don't, as long as it is off the road), and generally easey peasey. Maybe I am just lucky.
Doucement mes amis, doucement.

Whilst I agree on the seatbelt / helmet observation which IS SAFETY related it bears no relation to the downright FRAUD that the DVLA is actually perpetrating right now.

Anyway, its not the "ease" of the new system that's the problem its the fact they seem incapable of changing it to conform to the 365 days proportional system that EVERYONE ELSE uses !! There is no longer a need to use the 12 month system, there are no bl**dy tax disks anymore with twelve different months printed on them!!! (ANOTHER SAVING FOR THEM)

Talking of "ease of use" I do have to say "WELL DONE DVLA" now because after having declared sorn on the Saturday, 30th May I actually got the refund of tax on the 5th June.

Then again all they had to do was programme the system to accept external input from the user, us, and automate the cheque issuing sequence /postage... there you go, easy wasn't it, now do the same with the double taxation problem

[PTR200Jag]

Yep, I'm with PTR and thomas45 on this one, it's about time we all united against these Highwaymen, I wonder what would happen if we all declared SORN on our cars and bikes at the same time and then continued to use them? I doubt that their computers could handle the inundation and the privatised Post Office would keel over under the mountain of fines letters handed out. I realise that the JEC would not condone such anarchy but like many I have a catalogue of stories of complete incompetence and downright skulduggery perpetrated by the DVLA. Who gave anyone the right to change the name from Road Fund Licence to Vehicle Excise Duty anyway?

Come to think of it, who handed out the right for the Government to have a fair referendum on entering the Common Market all those years ago and then by stealth, change it beyond all recognition to the present interfering bunch of freeloaders?

Must go lie down now, all rants used up for today and 4 hours remaining!
Ian

Arggh, just as I was calming down, someone mentions the EU... no names mentioned here
Totally agree, we voted all those years ago for a Common Market, somewhere to trade our wares.... when we were a manufacturing country
Now the MEP see it as a gravy train and suddenly they want to control EVERYTHING... that was not what I signed up to.

Now does that remind you of a certain Football chief and funnily enough an F1 chief and probably a lot more besides,,,, if we don't stand up and say something nothing will change... well at least if you do say something and nothing changes you will have got it off your chest!

I am off to play Jags now.......

[poprivet]

I decided to SORN the xjs on the last day of Sept which was done online. Cheque received in the post this morning, ok its not an instant bacs transfer, but much better then I had been expecting.

[PTR200Jag]

I decided to SORN the xjs on the last day of Sept which was done online. Cheque received in the post this morning, ok its not an instant bacs transfer, but much better then I had been expecting.

I did the same on my S2000, about 3pm on the 30th, last day, cheque received today...very good BUT if they can take it out of my account when I apply for road tax WHY can't they put it back into my account?
Now I have to take a trip to the bank to pay the cheque in....

Still, an improvement on the six weeks it used to take!!