Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The New, Customer-Friendly DMV?

Sometimes, I feel sorry for the DMV. Not necessarily the people who work there, but rather, for the entity as a whole. It has such a bad reputation that just mentioning the initials brings shudders to many people.

So, when I got a notice in the mail letting me know that I had to go to the DMV to renew my driver's license, I was not happy. I immediately tried to renew it online, however, I had hit the lucky number of years that triggered a required in-person visit. Needless, to say, I was not a happy camper at this point.

I went online and tried to make an appointment, however, the closest appointment was several weeks away and so I resigned myself to having to go through the "DMV experience" and suffer with my neighbors and fellow citizens.

While I was online, I thought that I would at least check the hours that they were open and after I selected my local DMV office, I was presented with a web page that was very easy to navigate and very pleasing to the eye. Much to my surprise, right on the front page, there was a list of local DMV offices and the Wait Times for Walk In Appointments. Wow! This was great!

My local office had a short 19 minute wait and if I cared to drive to a town close by, I could walk in and wait only 5 minutes. And the best part was that when I drove down to the office, it was a short wait!

Kudos to the folks at the DMV who implemented this new site and linked up the wait times. I can't wait for my license to expire again. OK, just kidding, but it definitely made it easier.

Thanks for reading,
Brandon

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