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.