Fixing D.M.V. Should Be A Priority

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com

When I finally got the counter at the Department of Motor Vehicles on Thursday afternoon and handed over my paperwork to register a motorcycle and transfer a license plate, the customer service rep asked if she could throw away my numbered ticket for me. No, I replied, I wanted to keep it as a souvenir. The woman replied, “To remember how long it took?”

She nailed it. And, in chatting, revealed that D.M.V. employees are just as frustrated, angry and exasperated by the horrible system that forces motorists to wait, and wait, and wait for service.

I arrived at the Winsted office just after 11:30 a.m. It took nearly a half-hour of standing in line just to get a numbered ticket, which was stamped 12:03:55. It then took another two and one-half hours of waiting to finally arrive at the counter.

“This is absolutely ridiculous. They’re dogging it,” said one irate man as he waited for his number to be called. And that’s how it appears from the cheap seats. When you’re sitting there and watching the customer service reps chat with those at the windows, it looks like they’re shooting the breeze. That’s not the case. When my turn came, I watched specifically for time being wasted and there was none. The rep may have been conversing, but she was working all the time – presumably dealing with slow computers.

My total time inside of D.M.V. was two hours, 55 minutes. Tack on the drive time to and from D.M.V., it took half the work day to get a motorcycle on the road. Two Cheshire cops who had first gone to the Waterbury office and found it swamped decided to try the Winsted office. When the wait time appeared as bad or worse, they gave up.

Suffice to say that the system is broken, a fact consumers and D.M.V. employees agree on, nobody wants to fix it. The ticket said, “Please have a seat. Your number will be called shortly.” What a bad, bad joke.