Tag Archives: DVLA

Transport

A Bill But No Detail

Leave a comment

Yesterday I had a decidedly interesting bill from Hertz, the people who we rented a car from on our trip to France in the summer. The bill is for an administration charge, for supplying my details to “the relevant authorityâ€? in Switzerland for a penalty charge. All well and good, but it doesn’t actually say what the penalty is for, aside from “Trafficâ€?, nor where it actually occurred – for that part the bill just quotes the reference number for the penalty notice.

Whilst it’s entirely possible that I may have broken some rule or other, what is slightly suspicious is that we weren’t actually in Switzerland for all that long. We picked the car up at about 3:30pm, and headed straight for the border – we were driving in France literally within minutes of leaving the airport.

Anyway, after exchange the bill is only about half what the rental companies charge over here – at about £20. I’ve sent an e-mail off to Hertz customer service, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t have much more detail. I’d only really be bothered (and I suspect will only actually find out what I did when it does) if an actual ticket turns up, and that really depends whether the Swiss signed up to the EU process whereby they can get the DVLA to issue tickets, or whether the Swiss chase up the ticket.

Now I guess it’s just a question of waiting.

Computers/Technology, Transport, Web/Internet

Off to the Post Office for Us…

Leave a comment

One of the most popular posts on the blog is my post of a couple of years ago about the DVLA online vehicle registration. However whilst I have always been able to register one of our cars using the service, the other has always had an old style form. However last week a new style form turned up.

The online service isn’t available until the fifteenth of the renewal month, so yesterday afternoon I dug out the paperwork and tried to register.

The process makes use of a database of MOT tests and the insurers database in order to validate that your car has a valid MOT and insurance, however that hits a bit of a problem. If like us your insurance and MOT expire at around the same time as the car tax is due the database will report that insurance is not valid. You then get a helpful screen suggesting that you try again once the new policy is in place – in our case that is four days before the end of the month which doesn’t give enough time for the tax disc to be delivered. Effectively we’re stuck with having to renew at the post office since we can’t drive the car without the tax disc, but the online service won’t renew until the insurance company database updates. The Motor Insurance Information Centre themselves admit that this is a problem on their site.

Thinking about it about the only way to avoid the problem would be to get six months road tax this time around to offset the online renewal.

Cars, Politics

Another Day, Another Letter Bomb

Leave a comment

So after the excitement around here yesterday when Vantis over the road received a bomb – apparently intended for one of their clients, Speed Check Services – attention is now focused on Swansea, where now the DVLA has now received a letter bomb, certainly indicating a motoring connection between the three bombs so far. There is also discussion about whether a bomb received by a man in Folkstone at the weekend is somehow connected too.

Quite what whoever is doing it is hoping to achieve by this I don’t know, since it’s hardly likely to make the government or the Police change their policies with regards to the motorist, any more than any other sort of terrorist campaign does. If anything it will only harden opinions against the perpetrators.

Apparently the bomb yesterday was addressed to someone specific, maybe going after people the bomber perceives as key players. However as with most organisations, the post doesn’t get to the addressee unopened – when I worked at SSE, all my post would be pre-opened and checked before it made it to my desk – even parcels from Amazon! As a result, it’s the post room staff who get injured, nobody else. Certainly, at this point in time, I’d be expecting post room workers working for anyone associated in some way with motoring enforcement will be feeling decidedly nervous…

Cars, Computers/Technology, Web/Internet

This Site is NOTHING to do with the DVLA!

1 Comment

Today was one of those days when you feel you’ve slipped into a parallel world where everybody is totally barmy. One of my more popular postings was this page about my experiences with the DVLA online vehicle registration page. It’s had a steady stream of slightly odd comments, however the one today really took the biscuit:

I sold the vehicle registration mark K108PKR over two years ago, and informed your office at the time, so I don’t have either a current licence disk or the vehicle which was a green citroen bx.Can you please advise what action I now need to take with this licence application

Reading that comment, it looked for all the world like he thinks that I’m the DVLA. Quite how he has come to that conclusion I don’t know, however looking back at the previous odd comments, a lot of them make much more sense if you assume that the commenter’s think this is the DVLA. Anyway, I’ve changed the title of the post from ‘DVLA Online Vehicle Registration’ to ‘My DVLA Online Vehicle Registration Experiences’ so hopefully that will solve the problem, although I’m still at a loss to understand how anyone could confuse my blog site with the DVLA…

Cars, Web/Internet

My DVLA Online Vehicle Registration Experiences

69 Comments

The Vehicle Licence Application form for the Golf turned up in the post today, however since the last time we taxed a car, it seems that the DVLA have taken a step forward. Rather than have to go and queue up in a local post office to get a tax disc, the envelope and renewal form were plugging the chance to pay your car tax online.

It has to be said that in typical fashion the URL they are putting all over the renewal document is currently wrong – http://www.direct.gov.uk/taxdisc producing a ‘Document contains no data.’ error. However it looks like this is only a problem with the redirect, a bit of digging around located http://www.vehiclelicence.gov.uk/, which is the site itself. (www.direct.gov.uk is the central site for government services, but it is really just a collection of links to the individual departmental sites.)

Anyway, the one obstacle I thought there would be to an online service is that the trip to the post office to tax a car has a second purpose, which is for someone official to check that each vehicle has valid insurance and if over three years old, has passed it’s MOT test. However these checks are actually done automatically during the online process by checking details against the Motor Insurance Database run by the Motor Insurers Information Centre to combat the problem of uninsured drivers, and the MOT details can be validated as a result of the new computerised MOT testing processes.

It’s a lot quicker, and is also available 24 hours a day. Essentially all you need to do is type in your reference number or car registration number, select 6 or 12 months tax, and type in a debit card number, so no more queues in the Post Office at lunchtime for me!