Hitchcocks Forum

When I bought my 2008 500 Bullet Military some weeks ago now, it was already SORN'ed by the previous owner.
I think most people are aware that this gets cancelled upon sale - and it's up to the new owner to re-apply for it - or risk a fine!!

No probs, thinks me - just wait till the V5 arrives, and I can do it online as normal. It arrived - so I inputted the reg number, and the V5 ref number as they asked - "Sorry, this cannot be done online - you need to do it in person at a Main Post Office"

Now I don't know what the Main post Offices are now like where you live - but ours is now a glorified container in a car park!!
So I took a look in the branch at our County town a couple of weeks ago whilst I was down there - that Branch was now only the back half of the building - and a queue of 12 in front of me - 2 tellers, who were BOTH dealing with the one lady at the till. I stood patiently in line for aproaching 15 mins - nothing changed - the queue hadn't moved - and they were STILL both dealing with this one lady customer - so I beat a hasty retreat, and am awaiting for my charge sheet to arrive through the post!!

Do the DVLA exist to serve us - or is it the other way around, I wonder. They always want your email address - but don't have one themselves - and if you've ever tried to actually phone them - IF you can dig out a number from the confusing web site - they are ALWAYS too busy to accept your call, and you should try later!!

GRRRRR

Mike

DVLA are now a business, they do not exist to serve us but to make money for themselves. They insist upon your e-mail addy because it is a valuable commodity - along with your home address and phone number - that will be sold to the junk mail and spam dealers.
I recently had dealings with these idiots when they insisted that a bike I had bought had to be re-registered and issued a new "age-related" number plate. The reason? On MOT the tester had by mistake written down one incorrect digit in the frame/chassis number section of the test form. It seems there is no procedure for correcting such errors and because the 'puters cannot use common sense and say "silly bugger's put in the wrong frame number", a new vehicle suddenly exists where before there was just a perfectly good 50 year old bike with complete history including its original buff log book. It took 4 months to sort out the corrected frame number and then they still sent me a V5 with the new reg. number instead of the correct original one. I have now given up and decided a '63 "A" plate looks much nicer and is rarer anyway.

On the other hand.........I had excellent service from DVLA local office a couple of years ago while registering a 50's Greeves which had never been road registered. Dispite the frame number already being registered to another machine!! they sorted it out promptly. (trouble is the frame numbers on Greeves are cast into the alloy front "beam" of the frame which can be swapped) Just needed to confirm with the owner of the other machine that he still had it.

Maybe it's the Post Office you need to moan about & not DVLA, Mike!! Have to say I've never had a problem with dealing with DVLA on-line or at the local (soon to be shut, now) licencing office, but the potential for stress is huge! The temptation to ride without a reg plate attached gets bigger each month, though - how many Police have the time to stop you nowadays, or is that a story for another day..? Steve

Pete, the sentence "a couple of years ago" says it all. You try it now!
My local office phone number is no longer available, instead it gives you a new number to call. When you call that number it says to call your local office instead because "this number is no longer used". So you call the local office which gives you a new number to call which says......ad infinitum. DVLA has become a pathetic very unfunny joke, a multi-million pound money making scam to fleece us road users of every last penny.