DVLA - Are they on glue ?

Hunnymonster

I moved house at the end of April, to a new build - first one in the street so was expecting the usual caper with incorrect addresses and the like. What I wasn't expecting was the ridiculous extremes I seem to need to go to, just to get DVLA to acknowledge that my address is *not* the same as one half a mile away.

I live at

1 Acacia Drive East Close (not really - names changed to protect the innocent)

There is a street called Acacia Drive, and another Acacia Drive West Close (whoever dreamed this scheme up at the council should be shot) and another Acacia Crescent.

All 4 have different (totally different) postcodes - presumably Royal Mail spotting the silliness and trying to do something about it.

I sent off my driving licence & V5 to get them both updated on April 29th. 2 weeks later I got back a driving licence (delivered on a Sunday - so I instantly knew something was wrong)- sure enough the address was 1 Acacia Drive, with the correct postcode for Acacia Drive - totally ignoring the details on the form.

So I called in at the Royal Mail delivery office and the manager there was more than happy to write a letter for me to enclose stating that the correct postal address is "1 Acacia Drive East Close" and that "1 Acacia Close" is a totally separate property. I enclosed this with my own letter to the same effect.

2 weeks later - another licence arrived with the same incorrect address!

I returned it with copies of the original letter and another covering letter - and a mere week later I got a correctly-addressed licence.

Meanwhile I'm going through the same shenanigans with the vehicle registration side - except that they seem to take 3-4 weeks to produce a new V5c with an updated address.

Why is it so bleeding difficult to accept what they're told on the original form if it doesn't exist in the database ? How can they get away with sending my documents to a different address where an unscrupulous person might get a set of reg plates made for my car while they have my V5 and ram raid a bank etc. or sell my car.....

Why is it that they are allowed to have a 3 week SLA for turning around these documents when a producer from HM Constabulary has a 14 day limit ? How many people get caught out by that I wonder ?

And why is the "Helpline" so nebulous that you need to play around in it for ages press 1 for this 2 for that 3 for the other - what happened to TALKING TO PEOPLE!!! and all at 7.51p/min (if you're not dialled up via the geographical number of course)

madfrenchgirl

i had a prob with them as well,

they are completely useless

i bought my little car on the end of august, tax was paid for 6 months by the trader, so only due to renew tax disc for 1st feb

went to post office on the 28th jan to buy feb roadtax for a year... lady telling me that according to their db, the tax expired in november and if i wanted to drive my car i had to buy a january tax disk. I told them to sod off, my car was not going to be pulled over as my tax disk was showing 310105. I phoned DVLA, after several calls to try to get to effing someone instead of their prerecorded messages, i had to get trough the fine claims to actually get redirected. They did not apologise for anything almost telling me that I was an outlaw, etc... I told them I had the disc. They said i should go back to the post office on 1st feb, and send the dvla my old disc so they can update their sh1tty db. Which I did.

Leaving post office for work, the cops were on my usual way, checking everyone's road tax... phewwww

the best thing is: DVLA never sent me anything aknowledging that my car WAS taxed all this time.

they are hopeless