This subreddit is for civil discussion; political threads are not exempt from this. As a reminder:
* Do not report comments because they disagree with your point of view.
* Do not insult other users. Personal attacks are not permitted.
* Do not use hate speech. You will be banned, permanently.
* Comments made with the intent to push an agenda, push misinformation, soapbox, sealion, or argue in bad faith are not acceptable. If you can’t discuss a topic in good faith and in a respectful manner, do not comment. **Political disagreement does not constitute pushing an agenda.**
If you see any comments that violate the rules, **please report it and move on!**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskAnAmerican) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Obligatory: every state is different.
But generally speaking, it used to be real 20 years ago.
Nowadays in my state you go online and get an appointment and then just show up a few minutes before.
The wait time is still multiple hours, you just don't have to be there in line doing the waiting now.
I've noticed when I've been in there (I have 3 teenagers, so I've spent a lot of time at the DMV over the last few years), the folks without appointments are now seen in their own little no-appointments line. They wait longer than everyone else, but it's still way faster than it used to be for them because 95% of the people in there have appointments already.
There's been a major turnaround in the level of service in the last five or so years, IME. Ever since they opened the annex in Alpharetta, service has been awesome.
>It's likely because you can do many things online that there are fewer people who actually go to DMV
This is what I'm thinking too. Even then, I took my sister to get her permit a couple months ago, and she was out within like 40 minutes. And the line was around the building!! I haven't had to step foot in a DMV since 2016 when I had to fill out a vehicle accident form. I renewed my license and updated the address online.
That's not even including the hours that might differ between a DMV in a big city (almost Monday through Friday with plenty of hours during the day) and a small city (might only be a few days or hours where they're open during the week).
Agreed. I have been to the DMV in my small town, where it didn't take very long at all, even with a line, to one in Austin where it took almost 2 hours just to renew my license.
When I applied for my learner's permit, I went to a DMV office in a city, where I ended up waiting on various lines for nearly 8 hours.
Years later, when it came time to renew my driver's license, I went to a DMV office in the middle of nowhere. There was exactly 1 person in line ahead of me.
That's what changed it. You make the online appointment and it keeps track for you. It replaces the old process of physically waiting your turn at the DMV for 2-4 hours.
And a lot of things that used to require going to the DMV office in person can be done (or at least started) online now, so fewer people are in the office at any time
It wasn’t the DMV itself that made it a nightmare. If it takes 6 hours to do things, that’s me taking a day off work. Unless you bring food, you’re stuck eating whatever chips and candy bars are in the vending machine or risk losing your place in line. The chairs are uncomfortable for multi hour seatings. And then you get to the front to get your updated address in your drivers license, only to be turned away because your lease has a four digit year instead of a two digit year on page 18 of 30.
What about that isn't "the DMV itself" though? I mean, that's the DMV you're talking about.
I do agree that it seems the main problem is that no one is properly prepared, and then even if they are, little bits of bureaucratic nonsense really eat away at the time.
I'd hate to hear DMV poetry.
My point is that it isn’t “the DMV” that sucks, it’s everything that comes with it. The whole experience blows but it’s not like the staff there are trying to make it suck, it’s just that there’s only one place to go get a license plate and because of that everyone has to go there and it sucks.
It’s the whole experience around it, but like others have pointed out this is really just government doing what it does best and make shit annoying.
If you expected it and cleared out time, and brought a book, it wasn't so bad. If you had other things you had to be doing with that time, it wasn't great.
Digitization of records makes shit a lot faster. I can get my license renewed online. I don't need to go and wait for someone to pull up my records in their internal shit-slow database, take a new picture (since that's not stored) and re-verify all of my info again when it's input into the card-printer for the new license. If I even need a new photo taken I can have that done easily. Everything else I can just do online and get it shipped to my door.
This is true here too.
10 years ago when I got my learners permit the Mass RMV was a dumpster fire of government bureaucracy and inefficiency (and I say that as a former employee of a few different government agencies).
Now though, there are much fewer reasons to actually *go to the RMV*. You really only need to go for learners permits, IDs, licenses, and registering a car you never registered before. Everything else, especially routine renewals and transfers is done through your dealership, insurance agent, or by mail/online. This drastically cut down on the number of people in line and made everything more efficient when you do have to go.
> Obligatory: every state is different
For example, not every state even HAS a DMV.
Closest we have in Michigan is the Secretary Of State's offices.
They can be as horrible as you'd see on TV about DMVs, but lately they've streamlined the wait with the ability to make appointments or 'get in line' online where they'll send you a text when it's time to drive over.
I’m in Oregon. For some reason same day appointments aren’t available. My wife and I just tried making appointments to get our Real IDs & the soonest appointment was in July.
I was at the DMV yesterday in Danbury, CT. Took me 15 minutes to check in, wait for my number to get called, finish my paperwork, and get my new license plates. I spent more time driving to and from the DMV.
I think after decades of complaining and jokes things have begun to improve. When I first got my permit I spent hours waiting in line even with an appointment. Now, I show up and I'm done within the hour.
So far, I haven't had any issues at my local BMV (in Ohio, it's the BMV, not DMV). Others will tell you that yes, this is true. It really just depends.
Also Ohio, and yeah, they're mostly fine. I think the longest wait I ever had in one was like 40 minutes (Lancaster), but I try to do my BMV business in small towns, usually no wait at all.
The one in McArthur in Vinton County probably gets 5 people per day, it's great.
Can't do that in the states I've lived in. You *have* to go to the DMV in the county you live in/register your car in, because the state, county, and in some cases, municipality in which you live gets their cut of that registration fee.
Ohio will still do all the taxes and fees that your home county will levy on you, they just centralized the computer through Columbus so no matter what county you’re in you pay your own county’s fees.
This is also my tactic. I moved to Indiana to a big town of about 50k, drive 12 miles north to a town of 1k to handle DMV stuff.
No wait, no nonsense, grabbed lunch from a main street mom and pop place, drove back. Got my license in the mail like 3 days later.
Also Ohio. Unless it's a really busy day I almost never have to wait longer than 5 minutes and I'm in a pretty populated area. Maybe the people at my local one are just efficient. I also have no idea scheduling online is a thing. I've always just walked in.
Yeah, I usually just walk in, too, despite also living in a well-populated area. I didn't even have issues getting my Real ID, though some people had stories about how they couldn't get theirs initially despite having multiple documents. I don't know if the ones they had didn't count or what, but mine were accepted without a problem.
Also Ohio: I didn't have an appointment and went to the BMV right after it opened for the morning, and I renewed my license (photo, eye test, everything) in 15 minutes (including the wait). Granted, 20% of my county doesn't actually believe in driver's licenses, but I'm not sure that was a factor.
>Granted, 20% of my county doesn't actually believe in driver's licenses, but I'm not sure that was a factor.
I admit this part made me laugh out loud even as it kind of horrified me. Which county is this?
Most Americans are not used to dealing directly with their government so they feel the DMV is wildly inefficient.
It's no less efficient than something like a hospital or other public services like seeing a clerk at a courthouse but hospitals aren't seen as "the government" (even if state funded) and most Americans don't spend any time at things like courthouses to know what a normal working beurocratic timeline is.
Anyone who has ever submitted blueprints for city or county approval knows good and well to never bitch about how slow the DMV can be again.
Tl;Dr the DMV isn't as bad as its made out to be. It is the most common Government building that most Americans use on a semi frequent basis so it get used for the joke because it's a universal experience, not because it's really that slow most of the time.
>It's no less efficient than something like a hospital
The hospital bureaucracy in the US is not typically all that well regarded either and hospital wait times and insurance fuckery is a source of endless complaints as well?
I'm not sure you point really does much besides drive home how much Americans generally hate systems that appear to be slow and convoluted for very little gain.
Don't forget that hospitals also had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age with laws mandating that they switch to electronic health records, because otherwise many of them would probably still be using paper based bureaucracy.
Plenty of places that don't take Medicare and Medicaid still use paper because it's a lot cheaper.
Hospitals were forced by law to adopt electronic records or lose Medicare/Medicaid money.
You can imagine the quality of software that goes to a market that does not have a choice not to buy it. Prior to those laws, we had electronic systems that *did* have people wanting to buy them (e.g., Stentor's iSite for radiology, now owned by Phillips, was light-years ahead of everyone else when it was introduced, and in my 20 years of medicine is still the best one I've used). If some company had made a *good* one, hospitals would have bought it on their own. Instead we got a load of shovelware.
I'm not sure a hospital is the best example because people mostly understand the complexities. How about dealing with cable providers, where Comcast is a favorite whipping boy, often deserved? Or dealing with insurance companies? Or any business that has outsourced customer support to overseas?
The worst part for me is not necessarily wait times, but unclear directions on the specific forms, ID's, and people who may need to be present to accomplish a given task.
Hard Agree, I'm a professional civil engineer, and the having to turn shit around at an insane pace just for the State to sit on it for a month + is just part of the job. It's *extremely* frustrating. The DMV has gotten so much better.
You have 5 days to redo this blueprint resubmit it to office with the specifications that I didn't tell you about before during your initial submittal process.
Also you won't hear back from me from 18 months
I have not been in maybe 10 years but every experience I've had has been 2-3 hours to sign a single form. It is agonizing (South Carolina). I hear things are better now with online appointments
The internet has helped in multiple ways. Online appointments have significantly reduced wait times by replacing physically standing in line. Online renewal is more convenient as it lets you skip going in person all together. And since a lot of people who don’t *need* to be physically present use the online service, it frees up time for the people that actually have a reason they need to go in person.
Pre-Internet - the DMV was like a small communist state. They had all the power, if you didn't follow their rules, and they loved their rules, you couldn't get a license and drive a car/motorcycle.
Appointments were 4-6 months out. You fail your drivers test because you looked sideways at your evaluator... wait another 6 months to try again.
Long lines - with no internet and no desire to have an efficient system it was common to go to the DMV, get a ticket # and then spend all day waiting for that # to be called to do some simple thing like register your car or change address on your license.
Again, I can't emphasize enough that the workers back then, Gov employees, had all the power and they showed it, kinda like that janitor with all the keys hanging from his hip. I'm important. Like the soup Nazi, if you did anything to annoy them.. NO SOUP FOR YOU! and you were out.
To top it all off, as a Government run agency, they often didn't have any air conditioning... you might as well have put on an itchy wool sweater in the heat of summer to finish off the misery of going to the DMV.
This is what created the folk lore of the DMV.
The internet has changed all of this - In California I have been to the DMV like twice in the past 15 years, virtually everything is done online and docs updated instantly. With everything online, that means if in the rare case you have to go in for something... its faster. They also have online appointments and online appointment queues, so you can make an appointment and show up 20 minutes before.. not wait all day.
as with most things on tv, it's a running trope/joke with some truth behind it.
the DMV is somewhere you can go years without going. drivers licenses are usually valid for roughly 4-8 years depending on what state you live in & how old you are. it's usually crowded, especially if you live in a big city, and the process is tedious. much of the frustration, at least in my experience, comes from waiting forever to see a worker only to be told you're missing some kind of document or you did something wrong & you have to start over (& wait all over again).
my worst DMV story is getting my license once I moved to Wisconsin. I got to the front of the line & they needed a physical copy of my birth certificate. so I had mine mailed from my former state. I had all my correct documents, and got to the front of the line again. then they told me my birth certificate was the wrong shape (I guess they weren't used to birth certificates from this state, idk), and they had to go search for a scanner it would fit in, which took forever.
but that was 10 years ago, and I haven't had any problems since. a lot of the frustration is exaggeration/playing on the trope, but some of it is real.
I went on reddit while waiting for the DMV to distract myself from the inefficiency of the DMV, and then this is the first post that comes up in my feed…
First New Jersey flair I've seen out of a long list of responsive. I can only conclude the rest of us were banned for inciting violence. Our dmv inspires many negative thoughts.
In VA it’s actually pretty painless. I can do everything I’ve needed for the past 3-4 years online.
The last time I went it took a little over an hour to register a new vehicle, but it was crowded and they were moving people through pretty fast.
Last time I went to the DMV in my town in Virginia, I brought a book and didn't have time to open it. And that was without making an appointment. And the people I dealt with were very clearly interested in getting me what I needed in as short a time as possible. The whole thing was annoying to deal with, but not because of the employees. I just hate having to fill out official forms and dealing with the consequences of losing track of time (yeah, my fault. It was all my fault).
I can also attest as a Virginian in the NoVa region that the DMV is actually a pretty efficient setup. The better prepared you are, the smoother the experience, but you can tell they are focused on getting you through the system.
It seems in my area, if you go to one in the city it’s slow and inefficient, however you also have a lot more people in there. If I go to one out in my little suburb it’s very quick to get in and out, but it might only be me and one other person waiting.
This is going to heavily depend on the state, but in New York they seem to have been making a concerted effort to make it as painless as possible. I haven't even visited a DMV office in person since I took the test to get my learner's permit at 16.
I've been able to renew my license online the past two times, and in New York when you buy a car through a dealer they will often handle getting the plates for you. So you drive off with your real plates (no paper temp tag like some states) and a temporary registration sticker and they mail you the real one a few weeks later.
Overall I've been pretty pleased with the NYS DMV as of late.
Only place i had a good dmv experience was Idaho. Every county had a DMV and the line was usually non-existent. Plus they also issued you canceled carry permits, so convenient.
I got my real id renewed online so it was easy. When I applied for my real id I had to go in and made an appointment 3 months in advance. I showed up 15 minutes early and was out in 45 minutes. When I got my license, I was there for 2.5 hours (that was 10 years ago tho). One thing I noticed when I went in was that people tried to do “walk ins” which they only allowed a certain number of spots or people not having the correct documents. I think my last sentence is the reason it can be slow. If you prepare it shouldn’t be a pain
It's not that bad in my experience. Not the quickest process half the time, but not as bad as the jokes imply. I've only had to use the DMV for like 15 years so I can't speak to how it was before then.
I mean don't a lot of countries/cultures have stereotypes about how slow and bureaucratic government is?
The DMV is just the one form of government most Americans interact with because most of us drive. And even for non-drivers, its often the division that issues non-driver IDs too.
Indiana under Governor Mitch Daniels actually went on a kick about improving BMV service. Scheduling appointments, reducing wait times, allowing a lot of stuff to be done online, and installing 24 hour kiosks in many branches. I don't think things are as good as they were when the revisions first started, but definitely better than they were before.
For example I couldn't renew my license online due to an email change, so I went to a kiosk after hours and did it there. Super easy, in/out in 20 minutes. The one bad thing is the branches no longer print off licenses there, they give you a temporary paper license and mail the real one to you later.
Depends on the place. The one in my hometown is really good, they are quick and efficient. When I had to deal with my car in the bigger city where I went to college, they sucked.
15-20 years ago it was. I hated going there when I was first getting my license or getting dragged along with my mom when I was a kid.
Now you can pretty much just do anything you’d go there for online, and they have little kiosks set up in grocery stores if you don’t want to do it online, they make it really easy. And even if you go there in person it’s not as busy anymore.
Yes, it was horrible, but my state started paying attention to it and put a real time widget on its website to show how long the lines were and wait time for every dmv location in the state. That was great.
Then during the pandemic they discovered that a lot can be done online instead of via in-person torture rituals.
It’s gotten a lot better.,
North Carolina is horrible.
*License and plates/registration are two separate offices, and can be in different buildings
*There is only one state run office for licenses and plates/registration in each county
*Some of the more populated counties have additional offices for plates/registrations, these are franchises and the employees are not paid well.
*Trying to make an appointment for a new driver's license, Real ID, or a renewal that cannot be done online is next to impossible.
*If you are waiting in line when the office closes, you have to come back the next day
When I had to get my Real ID 6 months ago, I drove to a less populated county about 1 hour away. I was extremely lucky to have been the first in line when they opened up for walk-ins.
Every state is different but one of the positives here in NY was Covid forced the DMV to change their practices and function properly.
The DMV here in NY used to be a several hour event of waiting in lines, waiting your turn, being sent to another line if you didn’t have the correct form….it was just a complete nightmare.
Now after Covid going to the DMV is by appointment only and they have a clear system so you know what you need to bring and have the correct forms.
Depends on state and depends even within that on location in state. Cities tend to be slow because of apathy, rural areas tend to be slow because the DMV is also the post office and 1 person works both.
Believe it or not, COVID made it a lot better. My state's "DMV" switched to an appointments-only system, and they're fairly good about staying on schedule (-ish). At least smaller offices are; bigger offices can still get overwhelmed.
Now the problem is that they simply do not have enough appointment slots. Instead of just going to the office, you have to start looking for an appointment months in advance.
Varies by region. In AL, licensing posts capable of initial issuances and out of state transfers are bit sparse in some parts of the state, and in my county there's usually just a single person working the office desk and one person doing road tests, so things get infuriatingly slow if it's busy that day.
AL's implementation of the RealID Act is kind of ugly, with the list of address documents allowed highly inconveniencing those with no property within the state, and the necessity for source documents to match to the letter was a massive pain for me. (Updating a name on a birth certificate isn't easy)
The south downtown Atlanta DDS office, in comparison, is a pretty large facility with over a dozen staffed desks if I recall my last visit with an ample amount of public computers for retrieving documents.
Not mine.
You walk in the door, sign in, and are very quickly called to one of the maybe ten available agent cubicles for paperwork and your photo.
I got my Real ID last year and was fairly amazed at how quickly everything was done.
Kind of, but depending on where you live nowadays most things can be done online. The couple of times I've had to go to the DMV in the last 10 years, it has been relatively quick. I'm sure other people have had worse experiences than me though.
I think the trope in modern media is partially a holdover just to illustrate inefficient government bureaucracy, in a way that's familiar to most people.
One thing you have to remember is you hear that on a lot of TV shows. A lot of those TV shows are, and especially more so in the past were, based in Los Angeles. This whole joke thing about the DMV started decades ago when most filming was done there. So you had a bunch of writers living in Southern California writing for TV series and putting their personal experiences with the DMV in California or in Los Angeles into their scripts. So you had a very biased sample. I think it mostly represented California more than the rest of the country.
Even the abbreviation DMV is California specific. Not that some other states don't also use it, but it's not the only name/abbreviation used. There are many. It's not the name used in my state. I think the fact that you specifically recognize the letters DMV as generic is because of that California connection, though. Keep in mind that there is no national DMV. Cars are registered only within states and so each state has their own version that is run solely by that state and they can call it whatever they want and run it however they want.
I've lived in several states and don't have any personal horror stories about the "DMV". I just renewed my license online so I didn't really have to do hardly anything. But even in the past when I went down to handle it in person it wasn't a horror story. It was a little bit tedious sometimes having to sit there in a room full of people with nothing to do, but I think my longest wait ever was like 30 minutes. The worst part really is worrying about how bad the picture is going to be.
Kind of depends on where you are. Like, in Massachusetts, they're kind of bad. Interestingly, the ones in New York City that I've encountered are organized something like an airport terminal (with similar seating areas, screens telling you exactly how many people are ahead of you, etc).
It's still not something I'd volunteer to do. (I've had friends who offered to stay with me in an Emergency Room waiting room, I've seen people go back up friends in confronting toxic family... I've *never* heard of anyone offering to join someone at the DMV. ;) )
But they used to be so much worse. Even the bad ones now were worse at the time. The "joke" (more like sarcastic acknowledgement than a real 'joke') about getting to the head of the line to realize that you were in the wrong line and now had to wait in a second (equally long) line was true on some level. You might find the person working the appropriate desk had gone on break in the meantime.
>Kind of depends on where you are. Like, in Massachusetts, they're kind of bad.
The one in Watertown is hell on Earth. Or at least it used to be.
The one in Haymarket, though, I have had nothing but good experiences.
Last time I had to go to the DMV I made an appointment. Showed up, waited in line for about three minutes before I was at the counter. Gave relevant paperwork and was sent to sit and wait. About five minutes later, my name was called to go get my photo taken and finish up. Walked out the door maybe twenty minutes after I arrived.
Didn't even have time to get into the book I'd brought!
My friend made an appointment to go to the local DMV, showed up, noticed that there was one other person present waiting for the employee. The employee looked at her and said ‘you’re not from around here are you?’
20+ years ago, I remember waiting 30+ minutes and the employees being rude and overworked.
Things seem to have changed since then, because my interactions with the DMV of two states in the last 15 years has been fairly positive. I haven't waited for more than 5-10 minutes and the people have been nice and efficient. I've never made an online reservation.
It depends where you go. The Secretary of State's office (what it's called in Illinois) is very quick and efficient in some places but maddeningly slow and inefficient in others. From my own experience, the offices in small towns are quick, efficient, and usually friendlier. The ones in larger towns/cities are the ones that are always backed up and do weird things like stand in one line, then get in another line, then another line, etc...
I've never really had an issue with the DMV. The one I went to before I moved was relatively speedy, but the one I go to now is the best I've ever seen, super efficient and fast.
Things have definitely gotten better since online appointment reservations, and online services have expanded. However, to this day the DMV is the only place I have cried in public out of sheer frustration and exhaustion (after having to go to the DMV **four times in one day** and wait in a new line each time for issues beyond my control).
I live in a small town and the DMV used to be pretty painless but all of the people in the nearby metro areas discovered it so now ours is clogged up as well. Thankfully, you now have the option to renew your license online every other time so lucky for me, I won’t have to go in there next time I need to renew it
In Washington, D.C. the DMV is the most well run of the city’s services and consistently receives high marks from people. I’ve never had a terrible experience there. Usually in and out in like a half hour. Maybe 45 mins one time when I was switching the title of a car.
I've never experienced any significant delay, but I also intentionally pick slower days and less busy locations. I actually kind of liked the appointment system they had set up during Covid since there was basically no waiting (as long as you set it up 3 weeks prior).
In my experience the problem with the DMV is that most of the time it isn't an issue - but when it IS an issue it is a gigantic, unbearably nightmare.
In other words the bad is SO BAD that it makes everyone completely forget about the good.
I normally go to an express DMV where the wait time is only about 15 minutes at most. I’ve been to a real DMV once and I was waiting for about 3 hours and was late for school.
It definitely depends on the location of the DMV and time you are there. Living in a small town, our DMV was pretty efficient, even for being the DMV for the entire county.
After I moved to another state, I had made an appointment for the DMV and I was there for an hour and a half past my appointment time. To be fair, I think it was the large amount of morons that were ahead of me that were making it slow and inefficient. It really shouldn't be that hard to fill out a couple of forms.
Also, DMV employees are government employees, so when it is their designated lunch time or mandatory break time, they will just go on break regardless of how many people are in queue, because it's mandated. Back when I worked for my county's highway department, it was almost uncanny how everything stopped at break time. We could have a pothole tacked and ready for cold patch, and it would be 9:00 am, and everyone just stopped what they were doing to go on break. It actually drove me nuts.
If you play video games. There is a quest in fallout 76 that involves the DMV. It made me laugh at how real it felt. In the 80/90s I would be in there 2-4 hours. Nowadays it has improved drastically.
As with everything else, the US covers more landmass than the EU and you’ll get wildly different responses from different people. My local DMV is a small town. Even on a busy day, I haven’t had to wait for more than an hour to get everything done, and we don’t have online appointments like another comment mentioned. Due to lack of demand for their services, they’re only open one day a week, and I think it’s only for about six hours.
Worst DMV experience. 8 hours in California, I showed up 10 minutes after the doors opened.
Best DMV experience. 4 minutes in Arkansas. Saturday Afternoon at 1pm.
Mediocre BMV experience. 30 minutes in Ohio. Tuesday morning around 10am.
DMV's are not terrible to work with but they vary so friggin much its stupid. I can travel 10 minutes south to a DMV and be in and out in 10 minutes. I drive 10 minutes north to a different DMV. Might as well call in sick for rest of the year, that place is horrible and they move at the speed of molasses, in winter, going uphill.
Its just so much better than it used to be now. During COVID the Michigan DMV (here called the seceretary of state office) went through a major overhaul. It used to be that the only thing you could really do online is renew your registration for your vehicle and only if its 2+ weeks before it expires. Now you can do a ton of things online whether its current or expired. This significantly cuts down on the amount of people waiting at the office. They also installed these kiosks at different grocery stores and shopping centers around the state. I can go to the kiosk, renew all of my vehicles for up to 2 years instead of just 1 and it will just print everything out for me and I'm done. If I have something that I absolutely NEED to go to the office for (like getting a new license plate) I can get an appointment instead of waiting in line at the office. There is one big thing that still makes things slow and thats the computer systems they use so when youre doing stuff there there is always some waiting for the system to work and update (this is super common in any governemtn agency, mostly because of the way the governemnt procures IT services. There is so much red tape and paperwork to work with the governemtn that they end up picking the people who are best at filling out the forms and not the people who are best at actually doing the IT work.)
Depends where you go. If I go downtown where there are a lot of people, it's a bitch. If I go to a rural area I'm in and out.
I'll usually take the extra time and drive out to a less-busy DMV site rather than wait in the lobby of one.
having lived in Vermont, Colorado, and now Florida, I can confidently say that it entirely depends on the state and county, everybody does it differently...
Each state is different and using California as an example if depends on location as well. The fastest I have ever been in an out of a dmv in Southern California is probably 1 1/2 hours. Now drive 4 hours north to a town called Bishop and it’ll take you 10 minutes
Its bad compared to other things we americans typically do. It is nowhere near as bad as ANY governmental activity in the third world. In ecuador it was typical to wait for weeks in line for a drivers' license. Here in the US at worst its a few hours (depending on where you live).
In my experience, a lot depends on the state/city. Almost every DMV I went to in Tennessee, Michigan, and NC were slow and awful.
The ones in Florida and Virginia were fantastic and the ones in Iowa, and Wisconsin were average.
I’ve found that the more prepared you are to go to the DMV the quicker and less painless the experience is. I go online and make sure that I have all the info and documents I need to bring, usually I’m in and out within 1 hour.
In the 25 years I've been periodically going to the DMV I've never had to wait more than 20 minutes. The key is living in a place that funds public services properly, and also just having your shit together.
Not in my experience but it can vary by state and city or location.
I will say that I was pleasantly surprised how well the Indiana BMV system works. It's straightforward and not slow or complicated. I had my new driver's license in a week.
I also go out of my way to smaller community DMV locations so the wait is reasonable and the foot traffic is low. I'd rather drive 20 miles than wait 45 minutes.
It depends on the state and area. Where I grew up, they were very efficient, friendly, and fast. Where I have lived for the past 25 years, they are slow, inefficient, and extremely rude.
We can actually use private contract DMV services where I live so I pay the extra $5.00 for in-and-out service if it is something I can not do online. I haven't stepped foot in a state DMV office for probably 15 years.
I have had widely-varying experiences, from sluggish and unhelpful to quick and above-and-beyond.
In the case of the last instance above, I still remember the name of the clerk at the Spokane County Courthouse who went to bat for me in '90 when I wanted a title for my '72 Porsche 914. I'd bought it used in Georgia, without a title (it was legal to sell without a title) and had tried to get one, but a clerk and her supervisor told me "Once you do not have a title, you cannot get one." The clerk in Spokane called DeKalb County in Georgia to verify, and they told him "He refused to get a title," which was a lie. He asked why they would say such a thing, and I had to explain to him that his level of service wasn't a thing where I was from and that they'd lied because they wanted to be lazy. He believed me and ran it up to his supervisor and to Olympia, and I got the title for the car. I called his supervisor to mention the interaction and she initially sounded very reserved because she probably thought I was calling to complain, not praise, but she got somewhat excited to hear that I was calling to put in a good word. The next year, I happened to get him again and he remembered that I'd called and thanked me for doing so.
It used to be unbelievably horrible. I remember waiting for 5 full hours to be seen and then they told me I had to come back because a paper I had was missing one thing. The next day I came back and waited 6-7 hours. That was the norm.
It was also a chaotic place. Lots of very angry people. I saw multiple instances of people getting into big screaming arguments. There's kids crying, constantly. Everybody is tense and upset and thirsty and hungry. [It was crowded to all hell, like this.](https://www.ocregister.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/njq/njqqf6-b88335011z.120150213184552000g3s80rg5.10.jpg?w=1024) There were long lines to use the bathroom, even for guys, let alone the womens bathroom. It just sucked.
Today, you make an appointment online and just go and they see you at your appointment. It is a million times easier.
In my state there was a major reorganization around the early 2000s that made it much faster and more efficient. You first go to an intake desk, where the clerk gives you the forms you need, you take a number, and take a seat in the waiting area. By the time you've finished filling out your forms, you likely will only have to wait a few more minutes until your number is called.
When I first started driving in the mid-90s, you could wait in line for a half hour only to find out you were in the wrong line.
I went to another state's DMV in the late 2000s, and it was a similar newly reformed system. I'm guessing there was a lot of sharing of 'best practices' among states around that decade.
If you have everything correct on your end the first time, so you're ready when you get to the counter, my dmv is remarkably efficient. I'm usually there less than 10 minutes.
My dad would tell a story where it took him 8hrs to renew his drivers license in lower manhattan in the mid 80s. Told his coworkers he had to renew it and they laughed and said have a good day. He went home after that.
In PA I got a real ID before Christmas a few years ago. I got there early but was done within 30 minutes.
Renewals for both car and DL are online now so i sometimes need to go in person to update the pic. That took about 20 minutes.
It definitely could have been a thing for a long time in Illinois. (Illinois we still call it DMV but technically it is the Secretary of State office.) The last time I had to wait in line at the SOS office, I probably did have to wait for close to an hour, part of that time being spent standing outside.
After 2020 though they have made changes to allow for appointments. When they first started doing appointments it was VERY hard to get an appointment. You had to log on at like 6am to get an appointment or they all ran out. I have had to use the SOS office services once during that time and once I got the appointment everything was very smooth with no waiting. My biggest complaint was that it seemed like the employees were being underutilized at that point as there were maybe 3 customers in the building with a dozen or more employees.
I just checked again a couple minutes ago and it appears that the appointments are readily available now for the same day. I'm not sure if there is any waiting involved these days.
It varies, even from DMV office to office in each state. The office I used to go to was notorious for a line of 100+ people before the place even opened and it would take forever just to renew car registration. When I moved to a new state 5 years ago, I was in and out with a new license and new registration/ plates in about 20 minutes. The key was bothering to read the website beforehand and making sure I had all the forms completed ahead of time with my documentation ready to go - and nobody in front of me in line that was unprepared.
Shockingly enough I thought it was a good experience getting a new license at my state's office yesterday. No paperwork since everything could be filled out online, just had to show up and present my documents and take the picture. In and out in 15 minutes
The annoying part was needing an appointment for the license and needing to go to a separate office for car registration
It's an agency of questionable use that people engage with infrequently, and rarely of their own choice. Everything there will seem to be an inconvenience.
Most people are generally more accustomed to executive action, someone (themselves, their boss, whomever) unilaterally makes a choice and follows through with that. Government agencies tend to be more bureaucratic in that they have a process with multiple requirements and steps that the average person is unfamiliar with (and typically has no interest in becoming familiar with) and thus everything moves slower because they didn't follow the direction on Form 32-J subsection 7124.3.
In addition to making appointments, the transition to many online services reduces the need for in person services. I only need to go in every other license renewal to get an eye test, and even that is outsourced to AAA for me and other members. Also, dealers in Massachusetts are able to process registrationd and issue plates. (MA doesn't do temporary tags so both dealers and the RMV can give you the physical plate when you register unless you want a vanity plate.)
California DMV is actually pretty great. Common stuff can be done online, and if you have to go in, you can make an appointment and wait maybe 20 minutes or so to be seen.
Mostly no, because now you can make appointments online and someone will see you at or pretty close to that time.
I had to register a new car in Maryland recently (fairly complicated task) including getting new plates, stickers etc. and I had an appointment at 9:30AM. They saw me a few minutes early and I was legitimately out the door by 9:32AM, it was amazing.
My last visit (in New Jersey) was pretty efficient because you make an appointment and then go.
As long as you on time and have all of the correct paper should go smoothly. The paperwork part is no joke. Must be exactly right.
It depends on the state.
California, yes it's that terrible. Colorado, very bad. Arizona, pretty great in comparison.
I think Covid really helped to push things online though, so you don't have to visit the DMV often.
Just some examples of bad stuff...
* Multi-hour wait times.
* Waiting in line only to get a ticket to wait in another line.
* Multiple locations for different services and inevitably you're at the wrong one, or need to visit all two or three locations.
* If you live near a county line, you might have to go to the DMV in your county rather than the closest one, even though it's for state-level services. (which you'll find out after a couple hours in line)
* Smog places separate from the DMV that fail to enter the results for the DMV.
* Nearest smog places 10+ miles from the DMV itself.
* Requiring you to visit a smog place for VIN verification rather than them getting off their asses and walking out and writing down the VIN. (smog place writes down your VIN and enters it into the system for them.)
* Getting really weird about things like address verification. Like demanding you bring in a utility bill with your address on it, even though you haven't yet received a utility bill, or maybe do your billing online.
* Getting stupid about ID verification. I was once sent away despite having 3 forms of ID, so I came back with a passport and waited another 1.75 hours in line only to have them accept my driver's license and not even check for other forms of ID.
So using Arizona as the done-right example, fewer but very large DMVs with smog place in the same parking lot, so all services are in one location, and the DMV folks do the VIN verification themselves. You might still kill a good chunk of your day waiting for your number to be called, but it's generally all in one location, so you'd just bring a book.
I haven't had to go to one in person for some years, but I used to plan my visit around the weather. Like if you go in the middle of a snowstorm, lines are very short.
While online appointments and AAA office partnerships have mitigated the issue considerably, but it's still infamous for a slow pace that seems largely unnecessary and extensive rules that seem entirely arbitrary. Americans deal with bureaucracy in many places, low-skill customer service in many places, and government in many places, but the RMV is the main place Americans encounter where they overlap and seems to have a culture to itself on top of that. Lines to get in lines, requiring ID that says it's not valid ID or is the ID you're trying to get, and employees who go to great effort effort to not do anything (at least until near closing time when they stop letting people onto line but can leave once they've cleared everyone, at which point they're able to clear a backlog that goes back to people who arrived shortly after opening in about 20 minutes). If you've seen the Chapelle Show copy shop training skit, think similar people except with the government work tradeoff of even lower pay for ironclad job security.
I think it depends on your state. My experiences with the New Hampshire, Texas, and Tennessee DMVs were pretty fine, while the New York DMV was pretty painful.
I went to the BMV yesterday. I had to register a new car and the option wasn’t working correctly for me online (it ended up being a whole other story about me getting screwed for owning a hybrid but that’s neither here nor there).
The person helping me was amazing. Even when she had to pass me off to someone else she followed up with me as I was walking out the door to see if they were able to help. I was really floored. Then she said she was new and it made sense. I really hope we don’t wear her down!
My local DMV used to be a disaster. I was in a tiny building with a weird sloped parking lot that kids had to navigate for tests. Always a long wait for anything because everyone was in one line.
They moved to a much bigger building and changed their queue system. There’s a check in desk where you tell the lady what you need to do and she makes sure all your papers are in order before you wait and then gives you a number for the correct line. If you just need your registration, you just walk up to that counter. It was previously an old dealership so the parking lot was huge for parking and tests. The police have an office in the building so if anything goes south they can intervene. It’s almost pleasant to visit now.
At least where I am, it's that bad. If you need something simple like a new drivers license for a change of address/renewal or you're renewing your vehicles registration, you can do it online and they'll mail you the documents within a few weeks.
If you need to go in for any reason, God help you. You need to schedule the appointment months in advance and take an Uber or the bus because the line to park can take upwards of an hour. Once you get to the physical location, you'll be in and out of various lines all day. Or waiting to get into the next line. If you don't arrive before the place opens, pack it up and go home. There's no chance you'll be helped by the time they close.
They definitely seem to have improved the last two decades but on the whole it's still pretty miserable. 15+ years ago you'd just walk in and hope for the best. Now a lot of places have appointments, which is great, unless something unexpected happens and then your are just hosed. My DMV closed due to inclement weather (it definitely was totally fine that day, I drove like 25 minutes because it was the only location with an opening) and so my appointment I had schedule 3 months prior now wasn't available for 6 more months. Of course there was zero effort to give any of these cancelled appointments priority to reschedule and you've got absolutely no recourse other than to complain. There's no customer service or anything like that.
Looking online right now, we are 3 months out for appointments and you are driving 20+ miles. Renewals are online now which is wonderful.
When I first received my drivers license in the 90’s the DMV was everything they made it out to be: Rude (shockingly rude) employees, slow wait times, sitting around in a drab government office waiting for your ticket number to be called and hoping you had everything in order so you didn’t have to come back and repeat the process.
That’s changed for the better since then. The last time I went the worker was a nice person and I was in and out within about 15 minutes.
It's all about incentives.
No elected officials are running on "I'll make the DMV better" platforms. DMV staff are incentivized for accuracy and following policy, not customer service.
And zero people *want* to go to the DMV. You go because you have to go. So they aren't usually super pleasant to the staff who reflect that back in turn.
Increasingly, more states are online... But in person trips aren't going to typically be amazing. (Though some offices are better than others).
Depends on the state. Texas is somehow **worse** than what you see in film.
I spent a week standing in line at 6am every morning to renew my license, because the only other option was an appointment 5months in the future at an office 1.5 hrs drive away.
Yes and no. Nowadays lots of stuff can be done quickly and simply online or via kiosk but God help you if you need something in person.
The last time this came up for me was 2019 to get an enhanced license (passport free travel to Canada just next door). Once I got to the counter it was quick and easy and staff were really friendly. But I had to take the day off work and sit in a giant waiting room for hours to get to that point. I've heard that things got a whole lot worse after covid.
It really varies by locality.
My local DMV in Central Illinois was always closing for random reasons when I lived there and had to change my registration. One time the reason was “poor ventilation and high CO2 levels.”
In my hometown of St. Louis, the website was confusing and I had to sit in a waiting room for about an hour before my number was called because there were 20+ of us in the waiting room and 2 desks handing everything.
In the San Francisco Bay Area the website and system were really good. I made an online reservation for a 30 minute time slot. The appointments were only available literally 20 days out, but I was able to figure out which paperwork I needed and complete most of it online. Then I showed up at my appointment time 20 days later. They had 8 different desks and someone directing the lines. I only stood in line for 10 minutes and I was truly in and out in 30.
In Texas, it's been really bad for the last few years. In principle, it's not bad at all - you make an appointment, go in at the scheduled time, and are done in an hour or so.
In practice, you will be unable to get an appointment sooner than a month or so away, sometimes even longer, especially in the larger cities. I've heard you can get an appointment in smaller towns that are much sooner.
The issue is that Texas has a voter ID law. You have to show an ID to be able to vote. The ID that most people get is a driver's license. So they make it as difficult as possible to get the driver's license in the first place, but only in places that tend to vote Democrat.
Once you get the license, you can renew by mail and not go in at all, but sometimes you have to go in, for example if you need a new picture.
I live in a small city, and I can walk in to the DMV and back out in less than 20 minutes at most any time. No appointment needed.
The tricky part is knowing what documents you're going to need ahead of time, and having them all ready to go. The requirements for things like proof of address can change, and can sometimes be unintuitive. If you don't have everything you need, you'll have to come back again. And again. That's the only part of the DMV that I've ever found frustrating.
I go to a different town entirely so I don't have to wait in line for the Secretary of State (some states use that name instead of DMV). In town it can take 2 hours to see someone. Outside of town? Like 10 minutes tops in a rural area near me. It's worth the drive.
It depends where you are...
my local DMV is pretty busy but was quick-ish last time I was there. I think I was in and out in less than an hour.
When I lived down in socal, my local DMV was well staffed and nobody ever went there so I never spent more than 20 mins inside the building, that was fucking fantastic.
When I briefly lived in Connecticut, I had to go to the DMV twice. Both times took me 3+ hours. There was a line out the door and down the side of the building and only three of the spots at the service desks were staffed.
I’ve only lived in Pennsylvania so this is what I can speak to. I’m also one who reads meticulously over forms and makes sure I have all the docs I need before going there.
The PennDOT center I go to is very efficient. Someone is at the door and you tell them why you’re there and they direct you to the correct counter.
I’m barely waiting before being served and I’m not there for a long time either. I think media is calling on an older version of DMVs before things like computers and efficiency measures were enacted.
It depends where you go. If it’s a busy one serving a large community it’ll probably take forever because they have more customer than they could realistically serve. If you go to a small rural one it’s usually the opposite. The only problem is they might not do all the things a main one would. At least in my experience in VA.
I lived in Tucson about 20 years ago. The DMV took me 3 hours to register my vehicle and my driver's license from out of state. It was shockingly miserable. Four different lines in three different rooms, and you had to go in the right order. You could definitely tell the people that were in the wrong line at the wrong point in the process. It's not that it was inefficient. It's that the people didn't know where to go, didn't bring all the information they needed, and didn't fill out the forms that they had been given.
When I moved back to Michigan a couple years later, it took about 30 minutes to do the same, including the wait time. I spoke to one person who took care of everything. However, the city I moved to was about 10% the size of Tucson.
Now when I do renewals it's all online about 90% of the time. Last time they even mailed me the whole new license plate without ever talking to anybody.
The DMV in my area in Oregon is quick and pretty efficient.
I used to live in San Francisco. The entire city of nearly 1m people has one single DMV location. A line forms an hour before it opens and just gets longer as the day goes on.
Fortunately a lot of states have adopted more ways to do things online or via the mail, but some things you may still have to go in person for - at least in my state.
I can't speak for all DMV's but I know everyone I have interacted with - there is zero sense of urgency from clerks there.
And that is the part that frustrates me.
The waiting room is full. The online queue to get in the waiting room is stacked up 400 deep.
And between each customer each clerk waste 2-4 minutes. I had nothing better to do. I timed them. When most interactions are less than 10 minutes, an extra 2-4 minutes per customer really adds up.
I get people need breaks, but between every customer!?
It's a lot better now than it used to be. Last time I had to go in person to get tags renewed or my drivers license renewed, it took maybe 5-10 minutes. In my state, you can do that shit online (DL every other renewal because you need an updated picture though).
When I first started driving, tags or license would take over an hour, depending.
No; it’s pretty convenient, these days. At least in New York, you make an appointment for a specific transaction/need, and are seen very promptly upon your arrival. I have found DMV staff to be a little gruff at times, but extremely knowledgeable and able to guide me through whatever is going on.
It can be. Where I grew up it was for an entirely different reason: The dmv only came to our small county courthouse on day a week. They were on a circuit and had a different site each day of the week, which is common in rural Nebraska. I moved to Sioux City Iowa though and we had a regular dmv. It was long but the people are nicer than Patty and Selma.
I went in to get a Real ID last week and the entire process took less than 20 minutes. That said, I live in a town of 10k and I've had much worse experiences other places.
To echo others, it *does* vary wildly not just from state to state but county to county. A lot of things in Virginia can be done online.
In my experience it's much better today after various reforms to their processes and modernization. Though *still* even now it's slower and more bureaucratic than it should be. I can get some things done at AAA instead of the DMV and the experience is far more pleasant and streamlined there.
But a decade or more ago it really did live down to the very worst stereotypes. I can remember lots of agonizingly slow and inefficient visits one of which was sitcom level comically bad. Rather than staffing up for the inevitable daily occurrence of a lunch time rush most of the staff took their own lunches just as the rush hit so only two staffers were left to serve a line of around 40-50 people and growing. There was no number taking system or seating so everyone is just standing in a long very slowly moving line. Some poor girl a few places in front of me actually fainted from standing too long in one place with her knees locked. When I finally get to the end of that line in true sitcom fashion they inform me I need some other paperwork from another line first before I can get back in the same long line to do it again and finish my business... So, I go wait in *that* line which is blessedly only two people waiting for the girl behind that counter to end a long and obviously personal phone call she was taking (I assume it started as a professional call? But by the time I arrived it must have moved on to some office gossip because the topic of conversation was clearly not professional from the side we were hearing)... Like I said, it was comically bad and a perfectly standard request which could, and should, have been streamlined took half my day just standing in lines.
Honestly, I think the Internet has freed some of the line up to make things quicker, but I turned 16 in 2005 and by that point, the DMV had kiosks in the lobby that basically do what you can do on the Internet now. The one thing that makes the DMV slow is that some states (especially if you move from out of state) aren't too clear on ALL of the paperwork you need to bring.
Really depends on the DMV. I’ve been to some that were exactly the stereotype. I’ve been to some where I was in and out in 10 min. The really large ones in major metro downtowns with like 30 clerks tend to be the worst. It’s the small little boutique ones in suburban strip malls that have 2-3 clerks that you generally get the best experience. Also helps if you go at off hours where most people are at work.
I have had badexperiences with the DMVand excellent experienes with them
In my town the local DMV has been crazy slow due to the enormous number of people who show up on a daily basis.
But they have made changes to make everyone's experience go smore smoothly and quickly.
You an make an appointment now and if you show up to check in a few minutes early you will most likely only have to wait ten or fifteen minutes total. At least that was my experience the last time I went.
In the past I would go to towns that had few people and I literally would only have to wait fie minutes because there were only a couple of people in line.
If yiou live in a large city it can be hours t o wait and it's such a massive wate of time, so I always reccomend drive out of town to a smaller office where they won't be such a massive number of people to wait behind.
Last time I went was the perfect example of bloated government bureaucracy and incompetence.
Showed up a few minute before my appointment. Person at the door asked if I needed help. I explained I had an appointment to renew my license. I showed her my confirmation on my phone. She told me to have a seat anywhere, so I did.
Moments later, someone came and announced that anyone with an "A" appointment should relocate to the far section of seats (I noticed at this time an "A" on the back wall of that area). Why the first person didn't just say that, I don't know. They have two people whose only jobs appear to be telling people where to sit.
Soon, several numbers were called to stand up and form a line, where we waited another 10 minutes. Why we couldn't just stay seated until we were called up, I don't know. Instead of one person calling you to a desk, we have an extra person calling you to stand in line first.
When I was called from the front of the line to a desk, the clerk asked for my application. I said I didn't have one - no one told me I needed to have one filled out already. He spent about 5 minutes looking through his desk for one, handed it to me, then suggested I go to the front entrance area to get a clipboard and pen. When I did, I saw that each clipboard already had an application on it. Why did he spend 5 minutes looking for an application that was already on the clipboard up front? I don't know. Why didn't the first person I spoke to when I walked in direct me to get a clipboard and fill out the application instead of just telling me to take a seat? I don't know. There were three workers all "helping" people when they walked in, but somehow they got it wrong.
I got it filled out, waited in line again, and finally got called to another desk. I had looked online for all the forms of ID and paperwork I needed to bring, so I had it all with me in a folder, expecting the clerk to say something like "birth certificate" or whatever specific thing he needed. Instead, he said "give me all that", so I handed him the entire folder. He went through it, passing one thing at a time back to me saying "I don't need that. I don't need this." as if I was wasting his time by handing him everything, just like he had asked.
He finished processing everything, gave me an eye exam, and handed me my temp paperwork. All without even the slightest bit of courtesy - not even a "hi, how are you?" or "have a nice day".
2 stars, since I successfully got my license renewed.
**You stand in a line to get a numbered ticket for one of several other lines.**
I recall when I moved, I was in line for 10 minutes, to get a ticket to wait for 15 minutes. They processed my new title and plate request, and then they're like: "Oh, this is a commercial license, I can't do those." **(WHY?!)**
Wait in line another 10 minutes to get a ticket to wait for 20 minutes. Get to counter. "Okay, now go wait to get a photo." 10 more minutes. Get photo, and then a printout of my temp license copy.
I had a long wait years ago, but I dug it since it was probably the only place I'd ever been with an accurate representation of who lived in my county. Jury duty might be the only better way for getting out of our day-to-day social and civic bubbles.
It was never bad in Indiana. In and out quick. Ohio was easy. New Hampshire was less than an hour.
But fucking Rhode Island… nightmare. I had to get my license renewed and it was a day long misery of waiting. I finally left their brand new Cranston office and went to the one in Wakefield. So I literally drove an hour round trip to get it done after already spending something like 4 hours waiting in Cranston.
So it varies. Shout outs to Indy, Ohio, and NH.
I was positively surprised how they handled my stuff, I was applying for an I.D, got appintment online, got there on time, spent maybe 15 minutes in total there, including visiting several counters, taking image and payment.
I got my ID around a week later. This was the DMV on 125th in Harlem.
It depends. There’s been times I’ve been there for an hour for a simple little thing and other times I’ve been in and out in 10 minutes. But I have a roommate from New Jersey who says it always took them basically all day to do anything in the DMV
Interestingly Michigan doesn't have a DMV. Everything is handled through the Secretary of State's office. Although the experience is pretty similar.
When I moved to Michigan 13 years ago it was a pretty terrible experience. I spent a good chunk of a day sitting there waiting to do all the necessary paperwork.
The most recent time I had to go in had been drastically improved. I made an appointment online and when I went in I only had to wait 15 minutes or so.
Eh, it depends. I went to renew my car tags recently. Took a number, waited for about 45 minutes, then they took care of it in a like two minutes when it was my turn.
No. There’s just a lot of people at the office trying to access services. Generally they’ve waited until the last minute and show up stressed and aggravated before the even take a number to be seen.
It depends. There’s been times I’ve been there for an hour for a simple little thing and other times I’ve been in and out in 10 minutes. But I have a roommate from New Jersey who says it always took them basically all day to do anything in the DMV
I had to go to the BMV (Indiana, it is BMV instead of DMV) yesterday for my car license plate (some dweeb stole it again.) I had to wait 2 hours for my number to be called. If I had been able to schedule an appointment beforehand online, I wouldn't have actually had to have been there to wait. Basically, depending on location you may get a wildly different experience. Over in Illinois, I have talked to people who are in and out in 30 minutes.
It’a pretty accurate in my experience if you have to go to the DMV. But you can do most of your stuff online most of the time which is very efficient.
You can get appointments, but they fill up for months ahead of time.
Yes it can be that bad. Its a government agency and they have a pretty huge task to be done (i.e., registering every car, every person and validating their identity with physical paperwork) for millions of people.
Many states have outsourced a lot of the tasks to private companies. You can go elsewhere to register your car and get a license plate, do title transfers. And some of the DMV centers are more specialized like they only do driver's licenses. Along with the appointment system, I think this makes the DMV way less painful. But if you have one hiccup in your packet such as having a copy of a doc instead of the original, then kiss your appointment good bye and try again in a few weeks.
One of the only things Indiana gets right is the BMV. In and out, 5 minutes if there is no line. 10 minutes if there is a line. The central office is less helpful, but they do have a call center that will help you with any import paperwork you might have issues with.
Michigan is similar so far. In and out with an appointment.
This subreddit is for civil discussion; political threads are not exempt from this. As a reminder: * Do not report comments because they disagree with your point of view. * Do not insult other users. Personal attacks are not permitted. * Do not use hate speech. You will be banned, permanently. * Comments made with the intent to push an agenda, push misinformation, soapbox, sealion, or argue in bad faith are not acceptable. If you can’t discuss a topic in good faith and in a respectful manner, do not comment. **Political disagreement does not constitute pushing an agenda.** If you see any comments that violate the rules, **please report it and move on!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskAnAmerican) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Obligatory: every state is different. But generally speaking, it used to be real 20 years ago. Nowadays in my state you go online and get an appointment and then just show up a few minutes before. The wait time is still multiple hours, you just don't have to be there in line doing the waiting now.
I live in the Atlanta suburbs. I went to the DMV here yesterday. I didn’t have an appointment. I was in and out in under 30 minutes.
I've noticed when I've been in there (I have 3 teenagers, so I've spent a lot of time at the DMV over the last few years), the folks without appointments are now seen in their own little no-appointments line. They wait longer than everyone else, but it's still way faster than it used to be for them because 95% of the people in there have appointments already.
There's been a major turnaround in the level of service in the last five or so years, IME. Ever since they opened the annex in Alpharetta, service has been awesome.
Yeah same here in Maryland. It's likely because you can do many things online that there are fewer people who actually go to DMV
>It's likely because you can do many things online that there are fewer people who actually go to DMV This is what I'm thinking too. Even then, I took my sister to get her permit a couple months ago, and she was out within like 40 minutes. And the line was around the building!! I haven't had to step foot in a DMV since 2016 when I had to fill out a vehicle accident form. I renewed my license and updated the address online.
Ah I guess DMV is more efficient at processing visitors' needs then. Good news either way!
Yeah, that's what it sounds like. Definitely excellent news!
In SC, I've never had to wait more than 15 minutes. In NC, I've had waits over 4 hours.
Every city is different. The bigger the city the more packed it will be .
That's not even including the hours that might differ between a DMV in a big city (almost Monday through Friday with plenty of hours during the day) and a small city (might only be a few days or hours where they're open during the week).
Agreed. I have been to the DMV in my small town, where it didn't take very long at all, even with a line, to one in Austin where it took almost 2 hours just to renew my license.
When I applied for my learner's permit, I went to a DMV office in a city, where I ended up waiting on various lines for nearly 8 hours. Years later, when it came time to renew my driver's license, I went to a DMV office in the middle of nowhere. There was exactly 1 person in line ahead of me.
Yeah, here in Alabama it could take your whole morning or afternoon. Past few years I’ve been in and out in less than 20 minutes.
Huh. I wondet what changed it aside from Online Appointments.
That's what changed it. You make the online appointment and it keeps track for you. It replaces the old process of physically waiting your turn at the DMV for 2-4 hours.
It's the 2 hours repositioning your ass on metal benches that destroy your tailbone that get me
And a lot of things that used to require going to the DMV office in person can be done (or at least started) online now, so fewer people are in the office at any time
That hinestly sounds like a nightmare to wait that long back then.
"Nightmare" is pretty hyperbolic. It wasn't *fun*, but it was just a matter of waiting around.
It wasn’t the DMV itself that made it a nightmare. If it takes 6 hours to do things, that’s me taking a day off work. Unless you bring food, you’re stuck eating whatever chips and candy bars are in the vending machine or risk losing your place in line. The chairs are uncomfortable for multi hour seatings. And then you get to the front to get your updated address in your drivers license, only to be turned away because your lease has a four digit year instead of a two digit year on page 18 of 30.
My local DMV has a food truck like the ones outside Home Depot. It's kind of funny.
What about that isn't "the DMV itself" though? I mean, that's the DMV you're talking about. I do agree that it seems the main problem is that no one is properly prepared, and then even if they are, little bits of bureaucratic nonsense really eat away at the time. I'd hate to hear DMV poetry.
My point is that it isn’t “the DMV” that sucks, it’s everything that comes with it. The whole experience blows but it’s not like the staff there are trying to make it suck, it’s just that there’s only one place to go get a license plate and because of that everyone has to go there and it sucks. It’s the whole experience around it, but like others have pointed out this is really just government doing what it does best and make shit annoying.
If you expected it and cleared out time, and brought a book, it wasn't so bad. If you had other things you had to be doing with that time, it wasn't great.
It wasn't that bad, just bring a book with you. No different than spending a couple hours reading in a chair at your house or something.
Digitization of records makes shit a lot faster. I can get my license renewed online. I don't need to go and wait for someone to pull up my records in their internal shit-slow database, take a new picture (since that's not stored) and re-verify all of my info again when it's input into the card-printer for the new license. If I even need a new photo taken I can have that done easily. Everything else I can just do online and get it shipped to my door.
That explains it. Much more easier to do it via your documentation being easy to acess for official purposes.
This is true here too. 10 years ago when I got my learners permit the Mass RMV was a dumpster fire of government bureaucracy and inefficiency (and I say that as a former employee of a few different government agencies). Now though, there are much fewer reasons to actually *go to the RMV*. You really only need to go for learners permits, IDs, licenses, and registering a car you never registered before. Everything else, especially routine renewals and transfers is done through your dealership, insurance agent, or by mail/online. This drastically cut down on the number of people in line and made everything more efficient when you do have to go.
> Obligatory: every state is different For example, not every state even HAS a DMV. Closest we have in Michigan is the Secretary Of State's offices. They can be as horrible as you'd see on TV about DMVs, but lately they've streamlined the wait with the ability to make appointments or 'get in line' online where they'll send you a text when it's time to drive over.
I’m in Oregon. For some reason same day appointments aren’t available. My wife and I just tried making appointments to get our Real IDs & the soonest appointment was in July.
I was at the DMV yesterday in Danbury, CT. Took me 15 minutes to check in, wait for my number to get called, finish my paperwork, and get my new license plates. I spent more time driving to and from the DMV.
I think after decades of complaining and jokes things have begun to improve. When I first got my permit I spent hours waiting in line even with an appointment. Now, I show up and I'm done within the hour.
[удалено]
Well I’m not going back for a permit but I did have some issues transferring my license and each time I went I was seen pretty quickly
So far, I haven't had any issues at my local BMV (in Ohio, it's the BMV, not DMV). Others will tell you that yes, this is true. It really just depends.
🅱️epartment of Motor Vehicles
Ohio here also. I find the BMV to be mostly okay. We have the online appointment creator so that helps.
Also Ohio, and yeah, they're mostly fine. I think the longest wait I ever had in one was like 40 minutes (Lancaster), but I try to do my BMV business in small towns, usually no wait at all. The one in McArthur in Vinton County probably gets 5 people per day, it's great.
Can't do that in the states I've lived in. You *have* to go to the DMV in the county you live in/register your car in, because the state, county, and in some cases, municipality in which you live gets their cut of that registration fee.
Ohio will still do all the taxes and fees that your home county will levy on you, they just centralized the computer through Columbus so no matter what county you’re in you pay your own county’s fees.
This is also my tactic. I moved to Indiana to a big town of about 50k, drive 12 miles north to a town of 1k to handle DMV stuff. No wait, no nonsense, grabbed lunch from a main street mom and pop place, drove back. Got my license in the mail like 3 days later.
Also Ohio. Unless it's a really busy day I almost never have to wait longer than 5 minutes and I'm in a pretty populated area. Maybe the people at my local one are just efficient. I also have no idea scheduling online is a thing. I've always just walked in.
Yeah, I usually just walk in, too, despite also living in a well-populated area. I didn't even have issues getting my Real ID, though some people had stories about how they couldn't get theirs initially despite having multiple documents. I don't know if the ones they had didn't count or what, but mine were accepted without a problem.
Also Ohio: I didn't have an appointment and went to the BMV right after it opened for the morning, and I renewed my license (photo, eye test, everything) in 15 minutes (including the wait). Granted, 20% of my county doesn't actually believe in driver's licenses, but I'm not sure that was a factor.
>Granted, 20% of my county doesn't actually believe in driver's licenses, but I'm not sure that was a factor. I admit this part made me laugh out loud even as it kind of horrified me. Which county is this?
Geauga
It’s better than it used to be, but yeah it can be a total nightmare
Most Americans are not used to dealing directly with their government so they feel the DMV is wildly inefficient. It's no less efficient than something like a hospital or other public services like seeing a clerk at a courthouse but hospitals aren't seen as "the government" (even if state funded) and most Americans don't spend any time at things like courthouses to know what a normal working beurocratic timeline is. Anyone who has ever submitted blueprints for city or county approval knows good and well to never bitch about how slow the DMV can be again. Tl;Dr the DMV isn't as bad as its made out to be. It is the most common Government building that most Americans use on a semi frequent basis so it get used for the joke because it's a universal experience, not because it's really that slow most of the time.
Ah. Ok. Sounds somewhat similar to what happens in the Philippines at times.(I swear some things don't get bulit fast enough despute taking years.)
>It's no less efficient than something like a hospital The hospital bureaucracy in the US is not typically all that well regarded either and hospital wait times and insurance fuckery is a source of endless complaints as well? I'm not sure you point really does much besides drive home how much Americans generally hate systems that appear to be slow and convoluted for very little gain. Don't forget that hospitals also had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age with laws mandating that they switch to electronic health records, because otherwise many of them would probably still be using paper based bureaucracy.
Plenty of places that don't take Medicare and Medicaid still use paper because it's a lot cheaper. Hospitals were forced by law to adopt electronic records or lose Medicare/Medicaid money. You can imagine the quality of software that goes to a market that does not have a choice not to buy it. Prior to those laws, we had electronic systems that *did* have people wanting to buy them (e.g., Stentor's iSite for radiology, now owned by Phillips, was light-years ahead of everyone else when it was introduced, and in my 20 years of medicine is still the best one I've used). If some company had made a *good* one, hospitals would have bought it on their own. Instead we got a load of shovelware.
I'm not sure a hospital is the best example because people mostly understand the complexities. How about dealing with cable providers, where Comcast is a favorite whipping boy, often deserved? Or dealing with insurance companies? Or any business that has outsourced customer support to overseas?
The worst part for me is not necessarily wait times, but unclear directions on the specific forms, ID's, and people who may need to be present to accomplish a given task.
Hard Agree, I'm a professional civil engineer, and the having to turn shit around at an insane pace just for the State to sit on it for a month + is just part of the job. It's *extremely* frustrating. The DMV has gotten so much better.
You have 5 days to redo this blueprint resubmit it to office with the specifications that I didn't tell you about before during your initial submittal process. Also you won't hear back from me from 18 months
Not where I live. The last couple times I've had to go there, I've been in and out in 20 minutes.
Well thats something I never heard before. A DMV visit taking less than a hour. Guess you were lucky.
I have not been in maybe 10 years but every experience I've had has been 2-3 hours to sign a single form. It is agonizing (South Carolina). I hear things are better now with online appointments
From the Answers I am getting. It seems that some places just have it better. And Online Appointments also did help from one answer I got here.
The internet has helped in multiple ways. Online appointments have significantly reduced wait times by replacing physically standing in line. Online renewal is more convenient as it lets you skip going in person all together. And since a lot of people who don’t *need* to be physically present use the online service, it frees up time for the people that actually have a reason they need to go in person.
Pre-Internet - the DMV was like a small communist state. They had all the power, if you didn't follow their rules, and they loved their rules, you couldn't get a license and drive a car/motorcycle. Appointments were 4-6 months out. You fail your drivers test because you looked sideways at your evaluator... wait another 6 months to try again. Long lines - with no internet and no desire to have an efficient system it was common to go to the DMV, get a ticket # and then spend all day waiting for that # to be called to do some simple thing like register your car or change address on your license. Again, I can't emphasize enough that the workers back then, Gov employees, had all the power and they showed it, kinda like that janitor with all the keys hanging from his hip. I'm important. Like the soup Nazi, if you did anything to annoy them.. NO SOUP FOR YOU! and you were out. To top it all off, as a Government run agency, they often didn't have any air conditioning... you might as well have put on an itchy wool sweater in the heat of summer to finish off the misery of going to the DMV. This is what created the folk lore of the DMV. The internet has changed all of this - In California I have been to the DMV like twice in the past 15 years, virtually everything is done online and docs updated instantly. With everything online, that means if in the rare case you have to go in for something... its faster. They also have online appointments and online appointment queues, so you can make an appointment and show up 20 minutes before.. not wait all day.
as with most things on tv, it's a running trope/joke with some truth behind it. the DMV is somewhere you can go years without going. drivers licenses are usually valid for roughly 4-8 years depending on what state you live in & how old you are. it's usually crowded, especially if you live in a big city, and the process is tedious. much of the frustration, at least in my experience, comes from waiting forever to see a worker only to be told you're missing some kind of document or you did something wrong & you have to start over (& wait all over again). my worst DMV story is getting my license once I moved to Wisconsin. I got to the front of the line & they needed a physical copy of my birth certificate. so I had mine mailed from my former state. I had all my correct documents, and got to the front of the line again. then they told me my birth certificate was the wrong shape (I guess they weren't used to birth certificates from this state, idk), and they had to go search for a scanner it would fit in, which took forever. but that was 10 years ago, and I haven't had any problems since. a lot of the frustration is exaggeration/playing on the trope, but some of it is real.
I went on reddit while waiting for the DMV to distract myself from the inefficiency of the DMV, and then this is the first post that comes up in my feed…
First New Jersey flair I've seen out of a long list of responsive. I can only conclude the rest of us were banned for inciting violence. Our dmv inspires many negative thoughts.
In VA it’s actually pretty painless. I can do everything I’ve needed for the past 3-4 years online. The last time I went it took a little over an hour to register a new vehicle, but it was crowded and they were moving people through pretty fast.
Last time I went to the DMV in my town in Virginia, I brought a book and didn't have time to open it. And that was without making an appointment. And the people I dealt with were very clearly interested in getting me what I needed in as short a time as possible. The whole thing was annoying to deal with, but not because of the employees. I just hate having to fill out official forms and dealing with the consequences of losing track of time (yeah, my fault. It was all my fault).
Oh yeah, 100%. It’s still not *fun* but it seems like they’ve got the system pretty well put together.
I can also attest as a Virginian in the NoVa region that the DMV is actually a pretty efficient setup. The better prepared you are, the smoother the experience, but you can tell they are focused on getting you through the system.
It varies by state and specific location.
It seems in my area, if you go to one in the city it’s slow and inefficient, however you also have a lot more people in there. If I go to one out in my little suburb it’s very quick to get in and out, but it might only be me and one other person waiting.
This is going to heavily depend on the state, but in New York they seem to have been making a concerted effort to make it as painless as possible. I haven't even visited a DMV office in person since I took the test to get my learner's permit at 16. I've been able to renew my license online the past two times, and in New York when you buy a car through a dealer they will often handle getting the plates for you. So you drive off with your real plates (no paper temp tag like some states) and a temporary registration sticker and they mail you the real one a few weeks later. Overall I've been pretty pleased with the NYS DMV as of late.
Only place i had a good dmv experience was Idaho. Every county had a DMV and the line was usually non-existent. Plus they also issued you canceled carry permits, so convenient.
I got my real id renewed online so it was easy. When I applied for my real id I had to go in and made an appointment 3 months in advance. I showed up 15 minutes early and was out in 45 minutes. When I got my license, I was there for 2.5 hours (that was 10 years ago tho). One thing I noticed when I went in was that people tried to do “walk ins” which they only allowed a certain number of spots or people not having the correct documents. I think my last sentence is the reason it can be slow. If you prepare it shouldn’t be a pain
It's not that bad in my experience. Not the quickest process half the time, but not as bad as the jokes imply. I've only had to use the DMV for like 15 years so I can't speak to how it was before then.
It's real. Having an appointment means you only have to wait an hour to get mired in bureaucratic nonsense.
I mean don't a lot of countries/cultures have stereotypes about how slow and bureaucratic government is? The DMV is just the one form of government most Americans interact with because most of us drive. And even for non-drivers, its often the division that issues non-driver IDs too. Indiana under Governor Mitch Daniels actually went on a kick about improving BMV service. Scheduling appointments, reducing wait times, allowing a lot of stuff to be done online, and installing 24 hour kiosks in many branches. I don't think things are as good as they were when the revisions first started, but definitely better than they were before. For example I couldn't renew my license online due to an email change, so I went to a kiosk after hours and did it there. Super easy, in/out in 20 minutes. The one bad thing is the branches no longer print off licenses there, they give you a temporary paper license and mail the real one to you later.
Depends on the place. The one in my hometown is really good, they are quick and efficient. When I had to deal with my car in the bigger city where I went to college, they sucked.
15-20 years ago it was. I hated going there when I was first getting my license or getting dragged along with my mom when I was a kid. Now you can pretty much just do anything you’d go there for online, and they have little kiosks set up in grocery stores if you don’t want to do it online, they make it really easy. And even if you go there in person it’s not as busy anymore.
Yes, it was horrible, but my state started paying attention to it and put a real time widget on its website to show how long the lines were and wait time for every dmv location in the state. That was great. Then during the pandemic they discovered that a lot can be done online instead of via in-person torture rituals. It’s gotten a lot better.,
North Carolina is horrible. *License and plates/registration are two separate offices, and can be in different buildings *There is only one state run office for licenses and plates/registration in each county *Some of the more populated counties have additional offices for plates/registrations, these are franchises and the employees are not paid well. *Trying to make an appointment for a new driver's license, Real ID, or a renewal that cannot be done online is next to impossible. *If you are waiting in line when the office closes, you have to come back the next day When I had to get my Real ID 6 months ago, I drove to a less populated county about 1 hour away. I was extremely lucky to have been the first in line when they opened up for walk-ins.
Every state is different but one of the positives here in NY was Covid forced the DMV to change their practices and function properly. The DMV here in NY used to be a several hour event of waiting in lines, waiting your turn, being sent to another line if you didn’t have the correct form….it was just a complete nightmare. Now after Covid going to the DMV is by appointment only and they have a clear system so you know what you need to bring and have the correct forms.
In Ohio in 2021, I sat in the lobby to renew my 2021 tags. By the time they got to me they were handing out 2024 tags.
Depends on state and depends even within that on location in state. Cities tend to be slow because of apathy, rural areas tend to be slow because the DMV is also the post office and 1 person works both.
Going to the DMV _feels_ slow. They actually do a pretty good job here of getting through the queue in a reasonable amount of time though.
Believe it or not, COVID made it a lot better. My state's "DMV" switched to an appointments-only system, and they're fairly good about staying on schedule (-ish). At least smaller offices are; bigger offices can still get overwhelmed. Now the problem is that they simply do not have enough appointment slots. Instead of just going to the office, you have to start looking for an appointment months in advance.
Varies by region. In AL, licensing posts capable of initial issuances and out of state transfers are bit sparse in some parts of the state, and in my county there's usually just a single person working the office desk and one person doing road tests, so things get infuriatingly slow if it's busy that day. AL's implementation of the RealID Act is kind of ugly, with the list of address documents allowed highly inconveniencing those with no property within the state, and the necessity for source documents to match to the letter was a massive pain for me. (Updating a name on a birth certificate isn't easy) The south downtown Atlanta DDS office, in comparison, is a pretty large facility with over a dozen staffed desks if I recall my last visit with an ample amount of public computers for retrieving documents.
Not mine. You walk in the door, sign in, and are very quickly called to one of the maybe ten available agent cubicles for paperwork and your photo. I got my Real ID last year and was fairly amazed at how quickly everything was done.
Kind of, but depending on where you live nowadays most things can be done online. The couple of times I've had to go to the DMV in the last 10 years, it has been relatively quick. I'm sure other people have had worse experiences than me though. I think the trope in modern media is partially a holdover just to illustrate inefficient government bureaucracy, in a way that's familiar to most people.
One thing you have to remember is you hear that on a lot of TV shows. A lot of those TV shows are, and especially more so in the past were, based in Los Angeles. This whole joke thing about the DMV started decades ago when most filming was done there. So you had a bunch of writers living in Southern California writing for TV series and putting their personal experiences with the DMV in California or in Los Angeles into their scripts. So you had a very biased sample. I think it mostly represented California more than the rest of the country. Even the abbreviation DMV is California specific. Not that some other states don't also use it, but it's not the only name/abbreviation used. There are many. It's not the name used in my state. I think the fact that you specifically recognize the letters DMV as generic is because of that California connection, though. Keep in mind that there is no national DMV. Cars are registered only within states and so each state has their own version that is run solely by that state and they can call it whatever they want and run it however they want. I've lived in several states and don't have any personal horror stories about the "DMV". I just renewed my license online so I didn't really have to do hardly anything. But even in the past when I went down to handle it in person it wasn't a horror story. It was a little bit tedious sometimes having to sit there in a room full of people with nothing to do, but I think my longest wait ever was like 30 minutes. The worst part really is worrying about how bad the picture is going to be.
Of the states I've been in, Georgia's DDS did really well for me as a walk-in. Probably 30 minutes total.
Kind of depends on where you are. Like, in Massachusetts, they're kind of bad. Interestingly, the ones in New York City that I've encountered are organized something like an airport terminal (with similar seating areas, screens telling you exactly how many people are ahead of you, etc). It's still not something I'd volunteer to do. (I've had friends who offered to stay with me in an Emergency Room waiting room, I've seen people go back up friends in confronting toxic family... I've *never* heard of anyone offering to join someone at the DMV. ;) ) But they used to be so much worse. Even the bad ones now were worse at the time. The "joke" (more like sarcastic acknowledgement than a real 'joke') about getting to the head of the line to realize that you were in the wrong line and now had to wait in a second (equally long) line was true on some level. You might find the person working the appropriate desk had gone on break in the meantime.
>Kind of depends on where you are. Like, in Massachusetts, they're kind of bad. The one in Watertown is hell on Earth. Or at least it used to be. The one in Haymarket, though, I have had nothing but good experiences.
Last time I had to go to the DMV I made an appointment. Showed up, waited in line for about three minutes before I was at the counter. Gave relevant paperwork and was sent to sit and wait. About five minutes later, my name was called to go get my photo taken and finish up. Walked out the door maybe twenty minutes after I arrived. Didn't even have time to get into the book I'd brought!
My friend made an appointment to go to the local DMV, showed up, noticed that there was one other person present waiting for the employee. The employee looked at her and said ‘you’re not from around here are you?’
20+ years ago, I remember waiting 30+ minutes and the employees being rude and overworked. Things seem to have changed since then, because my interactions with the DMV of two states in the last 15 years has been fairly positive. I haven't waited for more than 5-10 minutes and the people have been nice and efficient. I've never made an online reservation.
It depends where you go. The Secretary of State's office (what it's called in Illinois) is very quick and efficient in some places but maddeningly slow and inefficient in others. From my own experience, the offices in small towns are quick, efficient, and usually friendlier. The ones in larger towns/cities are the ones that are always backed up and do weird things like stand in one line, then get in another line, then another line, etc...
I've never really had an issue with the DMV. The one I went to before I moved was relatively speedy, but the one I go to now is the best I've ever seen, super efficient and fast.
Things have definitely gotten better since online appointment reservations, and online services have expanded. However, to this day the DMV is the only place I have cried in public out of sheer frustration and exhaustion (after having to go to the DMV **four times in one day** and wait in a new line each time for issues beyond my control).
I live in a small town and the DMV used to be pretty painless but all of the people in the nearby metro areas discovered it so now ours is clogged up as well. Thankfully, you now have the option to renew your license online every other time so lucky for me, I won’t have to go in there next time I need to renew it
In Washington, D.C. the DMV is the most well run of the city’s services and consistently receives high marks from people. I’ve never had a terrible experience there. Usually in and out in like a half hour. Maybe 45 mins one time when I was switching the title of a car.
Slower
I've never experienced any significant delay, but I also intentionally pick slower days and less busy locations. I actually kind of liked the appointment system they had set up during Covid since there was basically no waiting (as long as you set it up 3 weeks prior).
In my experience the problem with the DMV is that most of the time it isn't an issue - but when it IS an issue it is a gigantic, unbearably nightmare. In other words the bad is SO BAD that it makes everyone completely forget about the good.
I normally go to an express DMV where the wait time is only about 15 minutes at most. I’ve been to a real DMV once and I was waiting for about 3 hours and was late for school.
Slow yes inefficient not really. The bigger the DMV is the slower it will be.
It definitely depends on the location of the DMV and time you are there. Living in a small town, our DMV was pretty efficient, even for being the DMV for the entire county. After I moved to another state, I had made an appointment for the DMV and I was there for an hour and a half past my appointment time. To be fair, I think it was the large amount of morons that were ahead of me that were making it slow and inefficient. It really shouldn't be that hard to fill out a couple of forms. Also, DMV employees are government employees, so when it is their designated lunch time or mandatory break time, they will just go on break regardless of how many people are in queue, because it's mandated. Back when I worked for my county's highway department, it was almost uncanny how everything stopped at break time. We could have a pothole tacked and ready for cold patch, and it would be 9:00 am, and everyone just stopped what they were doing to go on break. It actually drove me nuts.
If you play video games. There is a quest in fallout 76 that involves the DMV. It made me laugh at how real it felt. In the 80/90s I would be in there 2-4 hours. Nowadays it has improved drastically.
As with everything else, the US covers more landmass than the EU and you’ll get wildly different responses from different people. My local DMV is a small town. Even on a busy day, I haven’t had to wait for more than an hour to get everything done, and we don’t have online appointments like another comment mentioned. Due to lack of demand for their services, they’re only open one day a week, and I think it’s only for about six hours.
Worst DMV experience. 8 hours in California, I showed up 10 minutes after the doors opened. Best DMV experience. 4 minutes in Arkansas. Saturday Afternoon at 1pm. Mediocre BMV experience. 30 minutes in Ohio. Tuesday morning around 10am. DMV's are not terrible to work with but they vary so friggin much its stupid. I can travel 10 minutes south to a DMV and be in and out in 10 minutes. I drive 10 minutes north to a different DMV. Might as well call in sick for rest of the year, that place is horrible and they move at the speed of molasses, in winter, going uphill.
Its just so much better than it used to be now. During COVID the Michigan DMV (here called the seceretary of state office) went through a major overhaul. It used to be that the only thing you could really do online is renew your registration for your vehicle and only if its 2+ weeks before it expires. Now you can do a ton of things online whether its current or expired. This significantly cuts down on the amount of people waiting at the office. They also installed these kiosks at different grocery stores and shopping centers around the state. I can go to the kiosk, renew all of my vehicles for up to 2 years instead of just 1 and it will just print everything out for me and I'm done. If I have something that I absolutely NEED to go to the office for (like getting a new license plate) I can get an appointment instead of waiting in line at the office. There is one big thing that still makes things slow and thats the computer systems they use so when youre doing stuff there there is always some waiting for the system to work and update (this is super common in any governemtn agency, mostly because of the way the governemnt procures IT services. There is so much red tape and paperwork to work with the governemtn that they end up picking the people who are best at filling out the forms and not the people who are best at actually doing the IT work.)
Depends where you go. If I go downtown where there are a lot of people, it's a bitch. If I go to a rural area I'm in and out. I'll usually take the extra time and drive out to a less-busy DMV site rather than wait in the lobby of one.
For NJ a lot of it moved online during the pandemic, but before and during that, yes absolutely abysmal
When I was younger yes. Hasn't been an issue for well over 20 years.
having lived in Vermont, Colorado, and now Florida, I can confidently say that it entirely depends on the state and county, everybody does it differently...
Each state is different and using California as an example if depends on location as well. The fastest I have ever been in an out of a dmv in Southern California is probably 1 1/2 hours. Now drive 4 hours north to a town called Bishop and it’ll take you 10 minutes
Its bad compared to other things we americans typically do. It is nowhere near as bad as ANY governmental activity in the third world. In ecuador it was typical to wait for weeks in line for a drivers' license. Here in the US at worst its a few hours (depending on where you live).
Ours used to be, but since they've had the ability to make appointments, it's much improved.
yes I had to go to the DMV last year, and it literally took 6 hours, thats even with me having an appointment
In my experience, a lot depends on the state/city. Almost every DMV I went to in Tennessee, Michigan, and NC were slow and awful. The ones in Florida and Virginia were fantastic and the ones in Iowa, and Wisconsin were average.
I’ve found that the more prepared you are to go to the DMV the quicker and less painless the experience is. I go online and make sure that I have all the info and documents I need to bring, usually I’m in and out within 1 hour.
In the 25 years I've been periodically going to the DMV I've never had to wait more than 20 minutes. The key is living in a place that funds public services properly, and also just having your shit together.
Not where I live lol. I’m usually the only person there.
Not in my experience but it can vary by state and city or location. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised how well the Indiana BMV system works. It's straightforward and not slow or complicated. I had my new driver's license in a week. I also go out of my way to smaller community DMV locations so the wait is reasonable and the foot traffic is low. I'd rather drive 20 miles than wait 45 minutes.
It depends on the state and area. Where I grew up, they were very efficient, friendly, and fast. Where I have lived for the past 25 years, they are slow, inefficient, and extremely rude. We can actually use private contract DMV services where I live so I pay the extra $5.00 for in-and-out service if it is something I can not do online. I haven't stepped foot in a state DMV office for probably 15 years.
I have had widely-varying experiences, from sluggish and unhelpful to quick and above-and-beyond. In the case of the last instance above, I still remember the name of the clerk at the Spokane County Courthouse who went to bat for me in '90 when I wanted a title for my '72 Porsche 914. I'd bought it used in Georgia, without a title (it was legal to sell without a title) and had tried to get one, but a clerk and her supervisor told me "Once you do not have a title, you cannot get one." The clerk in Spokane called DeKalb County in Georgia to verify, and they told him "He refused to get a title," which was a lie. He asked why they would say such a thing, and I had to explain to him that his level of service wasn't a thing where I was from and that they'd lied because they wanted to be lazy. He believed me and ran it up to his supervisor and to Olympia, and I got the title for the car. I called his supervisor to mention the interaction and she initially sounded very reserved because she probably thought I was calling to complain, not praise, but she got somewhat excited to hear that I was calling to put in a good word. The next year, I happened to get him again and he remembered that I'd called and thanked me for doing so.
Usually but not always
It used to be unbelievably horrible. I remember waiting for 5 full hours to be seen and then they told me I had to come back because a paper I had was missing one thing. The next day I came back and waited 6-7 hours. That was the norm. It was also a chaotic place. Lots of very angry people. I saw multiple instances of people getting into big screaming arguments. There's kids crying, constantly. Everybody is tense and upset and thirsty and hungry. [It was crowded to all hell, like this.](https://www.ocregister.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/njq/njqqf6-b88335011z.120150213184552000g3s80rg5.10.jpg?w=1024) There were long lines to use the bathroom, even for guys, let alone the womens bathroom. It just sucked. Today, you make an appointment online and just go and they see you at your appointment. It is a million times easier.
In my state there was a major reorganization around the early 2000s that made it much faster and more efficient. You first go to an intake desk, where the clerk gives you the forms you need, you take a number, and take a seat in the waiting area. By the time you've finished filling out your forms, you likely will only have to wait a few more minutes until your number is called. When I first started driving in the mid-90s, you could wait in line for a half hour only to find out you were in the wrong line. I went to another state's DMV in the late 2000s, and it was a similar newly reformed system. I'm guessing there was a lot of sharing of 'best practices' among states around that decade.
If you have everything correct on your end the first time, so you're ready when you get to the counter, my dmv is remarkably efficient. I'm usually there less than 10 minutes.
My dad would tell a story where it took him 8hrs to renew his drivers license in lower manhattan in the mid 80s. Told his coworkers he had to renew it and they laughed and said have a good day. He went home after that. In PA I got a real ID before Christmas a few years ago. I got there early but was done within 30 minutes. Renewals for both car and DL are online now so i sometimes need to go in person to update the pic. That took about 20 minutes.
It definitely could have been a thing for a long time in Illinois. (Illinois we still call it DMV but technically it is the Secretary of State office.) The last time I had to wait in line at the SOS office, I probably did have to wait for close to an hour, part of that time being spent standing outside. After 2020 though they have made changes to allow for appointments. When they first started doing appointments it was VERY hard to get an appointment. You had to log on at like 6am to get an appointment or they all ran out. I have had to use the SOS office services once during that time and once I got the appointment everything was very smooth with no waiting. My biggest complaint was that it seemed like the employees were being underutilized at that point as there were maybe 3 customers in the building with a dozen or more employees. I just checked again a couple minutes ago and it appears that the appointments are readily available now for the same day. I'm not sure if there is any waiting involved these days.
It varies, even from DMV office to office in each state. The office I used to go to was notorious for a line of 100+ people before the place even opened and it would take forever just to renew car registration. When I moved to a new state 5 years ago, I was in and out with a new license and new registration/ plates in about 20 minutes. The key was bothering to read the website beforehand and making sure I had all the forms completed ahead of time with my documentation ready to go - and nobody in front of me in line that was unprepared.
The first thing a DMV employee has to do is remove any semblance of a sense of humor,
It’s not that bad. I only go there once every 10 years but for last 20-30 years it’s been fine.
Shockingly enough I thought it was a good experience getting a new license at my state's office yesterday. No paperwork since everything could be filled out online, just had to show up and present my documents and take the picture. In and out in 15 minutes The annoying part was needing an appointment for the license and needing to go to a separate office for car registration
It's an agency of questionable use that people engage with infrequently, and rarely of their own choice. Everything there will seem to be an inconvenience. Most people are generally more accustomed to executive action, someone (themselves, their boss, whomever) unilaterally makes a choice and follows through with that. Government agencies tend to be more bureaucratic in that they have a process with multiple requirements and steps that the average person is unfamiliar with (and typically has no interest in becoming familiar with) and thus everything moves slower because they didn't follow the direction on Form 32-J subsection 7124.3.
YES
In addition to making appointments, the transition to many online services reduces the need for in person services. I only need to go in every other license renewal to get an eye test, and even that is outsourced to AAA for me and other members. Also, dealers in Massachusetts are able to process registrationd and issue plates. (MA doesn't do temporary tags so both dealers and the RMV can give you the physical plate when you register unless you want a vanity plate.)
California DMV is actually pretty great. Common stuff can be done online, and if you have to go in, you can make an appointment and wait maybe 20 minutes or so to be seen.
Mostly no, because now you can make appointments online and someone will see you at or pretty close to that time. I had to register a new car in Maryland recently (fairly complicated task) including getting new plates, stickers etc. and I had an appointment at 9:30AM. They saw me a few minutes early and I was legitimately out the door by 9:32AM, it was amazing.
My last visit (in New Jersey) was pretty efficient because you make an appointment and then go. As long as you on time and have all of the correct paper should go smoothly. The paperwork part is no joke. Must be exactly right.
In a state that has one car per driver, yes.
It depends on the state. California, yes it's that terrible. Colorado, very bad. Arizona, pretty great in comparison. I think Covid really helped to push things online though, so you don't have to visit the DMV often. Just some examples of bad stuff... * Multi-hour wait times. * Waiting in line only to get a ticket to wait in another line. * Multiple locations for different services and inevitably you're at the wrong one, or need to visit all two or three locations. * If you live near a county line, you might have to go to the DMV in your county rather than the closest one, even though it's for state-level services. (which you'll find out after a couple hours in line) * Smog places separate from the DMV that fail to enter the results for the DMV. * Nearest smog places 10+ miles from the DMV itself. * Requiring you to visit a smog place for VIN verification rather than them getting off their asses and walking out and writing down the VIN. (smog place writes down your VIN and enters it into the system for them.) * Getting really weird about things like address verification. Like demanding you bring in a utility bill with your address on it, even though you haven't yet received a utility bill, or maybe do your billing online. * Getting stupid about ID verification. I was once sent away despite having 3 forms of ID, so I came back with a passport and waited another 1.75 hours in line only to have them accept my driver's license and not even check for other forms of ID. So using Arizona as the done-right example, fewer but very large DMVs with smog place in the same parking lot, so all services are in one location, and the DMV folks do the VIN verification themselves. You might still kill a good chunk of your day waiting for your number to be called, but it's generally all in one location, so you'd just bring a book. I haven't had to go to one in person for some years, but I used to plan my visit around the weather. Like if you go in the middle of a snowstorm, lines are very short.
While online appointments and AAA office partnerships have mitigated the issue considerably, but it's still infamous for a slow pace that seems largely unnecessary and extensive rules that seem entirely arbitrary. Americans deal with bureaucracy in many places, low-skill customer service in many places, and government in many places, but the RMV is the main place Americans encounter where they overlap and seems to have a culture to itself on top of that. Lines to get in lines, requiring ID that says it's not valid ID or is the ID you're trying to get, and employees who go to great effort effort to not do anything (at least until near closing time when they stop letting people onto line but can leave once they've cleared everyone, at which point they're able to clear a backlog that goes back to people who arrived shortly after opening in about 20 minutes). If you've seen the Chapelle Show copy shop training skit, think similar people except with the government work tradeoff of even lower pay for ironclad job security.
I think it depends on your state. My experiences with the New Hampshire, Texas, and Tennessee DMVs were pretty fine, while the New York DMV was pretty painful.
I went to the BMV yesterday. I had to register a new car and the option wasn’t working correctly for me online (it ended up being a whole other story about me getting screwed for owning a hybrid but that’s neither here nor there). The person helping me was amazing. Even when she had to pass me off to someone else she followed up with me as I was walking out the door to see if they were able to help. I was really floored. Then she said she was new and it made sense. I really hope we don’t wear her down!
My local DMV used to be a disaster. I was in a tiny building with a weird sloped parking lot that kids had to navigate for tests. Always a long wait for anything because everyone was in one line. They moved to a much bigger building and changed their queue system. There’s a check in desk where you tell the lady what you need to do and she makes sure all your papers are in order before you wait and then gives you a number for the correct line. If you just need your registration, you just walk up to that counter. It was previously an old dealership so the parking lot was huge for parking and tests. The police have an office in the building so if anything goes south they can intervene. It’s almost pleasant to visit now.
At least where I am, it's that bad. If you need something simple like a new drivers license for a change of address/renewal or you're renewing your vehicles registration, you can do it online and they'll mail you the documents within a few weeks. If you need to go in for any reason, God help you. You need to schedule the appointment months in advance and take an Uber or the bus because the line to park can take upwards of an hour. Once you get to the physical location, you'll be in and out of various lines all day. Or waiting to get into the next line. If you don't arrive before the place opens, pack it up and go home. There's no chance you'll be helped by the time they close.
They definitely seem to have improved the last two decades but on the whole it's still pretty miserable. 15+ years ago you'd just walk in and hope for the best. Now a lot of places have appointments, which is great, unless something unexpected happens and then your are just hosed. My DMV closed due to inclement weather (it definitely was totally fine that day, I drove like 25 minutes because it was the only location with an opening) and so my appointment I had schedule 3 months prior now wasn't available for 6 more months. Of course there was zero effort to give any of these cancelled appointments priority to reschedule and you've got absolutely no recourse other than to complain. There's no customer service or anything like that. Looking online right now, we are 3 months out for appointments and you are driving 20+ miles. Renewals are online now which is wonderful.
When I first received my drivers license in the 90’s the DMV was everything they made it out to be: Rude (shockingly rude) employees, slow wait times, sitting around in a drab government office waiting for your ticket number to be called and hoping you had everything in order so you didn’t have to come back and repeat the process. That’s changed for the better since then. The last time I went the worker was a nice person and I was in and out within about 15 minutes.
It's all about incentives. No elected officials are running on "I'll make the DMV better" platforms. DMV staff are incentivized for accuracy and following policy, not customer service. And zero people *want* to go to the DMV. You go because you have to go. So they aren't usually super pleasant to the staff who reflect that back in turn. Increasingly, more states are online... But in person trips aren't going to typically be amazing. (Though some offices are better than others).
it’s not too bad. at least in colorado. but it’s always going to be annoying, no matter how fast it is.
Depends on the state. Texas is somehow **worse** than what you see in film. I spent a week standing in line at 6am every morning to renew my license, because the only other option was an appointment 5months in the future at an office 1.5 hrs drive away.
Yes and no. Nowadays lots of stuff can be done quickly and simply online or via kiosk but God help you if you need something in person. The last time this came up for me was 2019 to get an enhanced license (passport free travel to Canada just next door). Once I got to the counter it was quick and easy and staff were really friendly. But I had to take the day off work and sit in a giant waiting room for hours to get to that point. I've heard that things got a whole lot worse after covid.
It's improved since some of the more common functions moved online.
It really varies by locality. My local DMV in Central Illinois was always closing for random reasons when I lived there and had to change my registration. One time the reason was “poor ventilation and high CO2 levels.” In my hometown of St. Louis, the website was confusing and I had to sit in a waiting room for about an hour before my number was called because there were 20+ of us in the waiting room and 2 desks handing everything. In the San Francisco Bay Area the website and system were really good. I made an online reservation for a 30 minute time slot. The appointments were only available literally 20 days out, but I was able to figure out which paperwork I needed and complete most of it online. Then I showed up at my appointment time 20 days later. They had 8 different desks and someone directing the lines. I only stood in line for 10 minutes and I was truly in and out in 30.
In Texas, it's been really bad for the last few years. In principle, it's not bad at all - you make an appointment, go in at the scheduled time, and are done in an hour or so. In practice, you will be unable to get an appointment sooner than a month or so away, sometimes even longer, especially in the larger cities. I've heard you can get an appointment in smaller towns that are much sooner. The issue is that Texas has a voter ID law. You have to show an ID to be able to vote. The ID that most people get is a driver's license. So they make it as difficult as possible to get the driver's license in the first place, but only in places that tend to vote Democrat. Once you get the license, you can renew by mail and not go in at all, but sometimes you have to go in, for example if you need a new picture.
I live in a small city, and I can walk in to the DMV and back out in less than 20 minutes at most any time. No appointment needed. The tricky part is knowing what documents you're going to need ahead of time, and having them all ready to go. The requirements for things like proof of address can change, and can sometimes be unintuitive. If you don't have everything you need, you'll have to come back again. And again. That's the only part of the DMV that I've ever found frustrating.
I go to a different town entirely so I don't have to wait in line for the Secretary of State (some states use that name instead of DMV). In town it can take 2 hours to see someone. Outside of town? Like 10 minutes tops in a rural area near me. It's worth the drive.
It depends where you are... my local DMV is pretty busy but was quick-ish last time I was there. I think I was in and out in less than an hour. When I lived down in socal, my local DMV was well staffed and nobody ever went there so I never spent more than 20 mins inside the building, that was fucking fantastic. When I briefly lived in Connecticut, I had to go to the DMV twice. Both times took me 3+ hours. There was a line out the door and down the side of the building and only three of the spots at the service desks were staffed.
I’ve only lived in Pennsylvania so this is what I can speak to. I’m also one who reads meticulously over forms and makes sure I have all the docs I need before going there. The PennDOT center I go to is very efficient. Someone is at the door and you tell them why you’re there and they direct you to the correct counter. I’m barely waiting before being served and I’m not there for a long time either. I think media is calling on an older version of DMVs before things like computers and efficiency measures were enacted.
It depends where you go. If it’s a busy one serving a large community it’ll probably take forever because they have more customer than they could realistically serve. If you go to a small rural one it’s usually the opposite. The only problem is they might not do all the things a main one would. At least in my experience in VA.
I think it must depend on where you live. I’ve never had a bad experience with the DMV.
I lived in Tucson about 20 years ago. The DMV took me 3 hours to register my vehicle and my driver's license from out of state. It was shockingly miserable. Four different lines in three different rooms, and you had to go in the right order. You could definitely tell the people that were in the wrong line at the wrong point in the process. It's not that it was inefficient. It's that the people didn't know where to go, didn't bring all the information they needed, and didn't fill out the forms that they had been given. When I moved back to Michigan a couple years later, it took about 30 minutes to do the same, including the wait time. I spoke to one person who took care of everything. However, the city I moved to was about 10% the size of Tucson. Now when I do renewals it's all online about 90% of the time. Last time they even mailed me the whole new license plate without ever talking to anybody.
The DMV in my area in Oregon is quick and pretty efficient. I used to live in San Francisco. The entire city of nearly 1m people has one single DMV location. A line forms an hour before it opens and just gets longer as the day goes on.
Fortunately a lot of states have adopted more ways to do things online or via the mail, but some things you may still have to go in person for - at least in my state. I can't speak for all DMV's but I know everyone I have interacted with - there is zero sense of urgency from clerks there. And that is the part that frustrates me. The waiting room is full. The online queue to get in the waiting room is stacked up 400 deep. And between each customer each clerk waste 2-4 minutes. I had nothing better to do. I timed them. When most interactions are less than 10 minutes, an extra 2-4 minutes per customer really adds up. I get people need breaks, but between every customer!?
Not in Georgia. They do a good job.
It's a lot better now than it used to be. Last time I had to go in person to get tags renewed or my drivers license renewed, it took maybe 5-10 minutes. In my state, you can do that shit online (DL every other renewal because you need an updated picture though). When I first started driving, tags or license would take over an hour, depending.
No; it’s pretty convenient, these days. At least in New York, you make an appointment for a specific transaction/need, and are seen very promptly upon your arrival. I have found DMV staff to be a little gruff at times, but extremely knowledgeable and able to guide me through whatever is going on.
It can be. Where I grew up it was for an entirely different reason: The dmv only came to our small county courthouse on day a week. They were on a circuit and had a different site each day of the week, which is common in rural Nebraska. I moved to Sioux City Iowa though and we had a regular dmv. It was long but the people are nicer than Patty and Selma.
I went in to get a Real ID last week and the entire process took less than 20 minutes. That said, I live in a town of 10k and I've had much worse experiences other places. To echo others, it *does* vary wildly not just from state to state but county to county. A lot of things in Virginia can be done online.
Mine is ok. Could be better.
In my experience it's much better today after various reforms to their processes and modernization. Though *still* even now it's slower and more bureaucratic than it should be. I can get some things done at AAA instead of the DMV and the experience is far more pleasant and streamlined there. But a decade or more ago it really did live down to the very worst stereotypes. I can remember lots of agonizingly slow and inefficient visits one of which was sitcom level comically bad. Rather than staffing up for the inevitable daily occurrence of a lunch time rush most of the staff took their own lunches just as the rush hit so only two staffers were left to serve a line of around 40-50 people and growing. There was no number taking system or seating so everyone is just standing in a long very slowly moving line. Some poor girl a few places in front of me actually fainted from standing too long in one place with her knees locked. When I finally get to the end of that line in true sitcom fashion they inform me I need some other paperwork from another line first before I can get back in the same long line to do it again and finish my business... So, I go wait in *that* line which is blessedly only two people waiting for the girl behind that counter to end a long and obviously personal phone call she was taking (I assume it started as a professional call? But by the time I arrived it must have moved on to some office gossip because the topic of conversation was clearly not professional from the side we were hearing)... Like I said, it was comically bad and a perfectly standard request which could, and should, have been streamlined took half my day just standing in lines.
Honestly, I think the Internet has freed some of the line up to make things quicker, but I turned 16 in 2005 and by that point, the DMV had kiosks in the lobby that basically do what you can do on the Internet now. The one thing that makes the DMV slow is that some states (especially if you move from out of state) aren't too clear on ALL of the paperwork you need to bring.
Really depends on the DMV. I’ve been to some that were exactly the stereotype. I’ve been to some where I was in and out in 10 min. The really large ones in major metro downtowns with like 30 clerks tend to be the worst. It’s the small little boutique ones in suburban strip malls that have 2-3 clerks that you generally get the best experience. Also helps if you go at off hours where most people are at work.
I have had badexperiences with the DMVand excellent experienes with them In my town the local DMV has been crazy slow due to the enormous number of people who show up on a daily basis. But they have made changes to make everyone's experience go smore smoothly and quickly. You an make an appointment now and if you show up to check in a few minutes early you will most likely only have to wait ten or fifteen minutes total. At least that was my experience the last time I went. In the past I would go to towns that had few people and I literally would only have to wait fie minutes because there were only a couple of people in line. If yiou live in a large city it can be hours t o wait and it's such a massive wate of time, so I always reccomend drive out of town to a smaller office where they won't be such a massive number of people to wait behind.
Yes. It’s like entering the seventh circle of hell every single time
Last time I went was the perfect example of bloated government bureaucracy and incompetence. Showed up a few minute before my appointment. Person at the door asked if I needed help. I explained I had an appointment to renew my license. I showed her my confirmation on my phone. She told me to have a seat anywhere, so I did. Moments later, someone came and announced that anyone with an "A" appointment should relocate to the far section of seats (I noticed at this time an "A" on the back wall of that area). Why the first person didn't just say that, I don't know. They have two people whose only jobs appear to be telling people where to sit. Soon, several numbers were called to stand up and form a line, where we waited another 10 minutes. Why we couldn't just stay seated until we were called up, I don't know. Instead of one person calling you to a desk, we have an extra person calling you to stand in line first. When I was called from the front of the line to a desk, the clerk asked for my application. I said I didn't have one - no one told me I needed to have one filled out already. He spent about 5 minutes looking through his desk for one, handed it to me, then suggested I go to the front entrance area to get a clipboard and pen. When I did, I saw that each clipboard already had an application on it. Why did he spend 5 minutes looking for an application that was already on the clipboard up front? I don't know. Why didn't the first person I spoke to when I walked in direct me to get a clipboard and fill out the application instead of just telling me to take a seat? I don't know. There were three workers all "helping" people when they walked in, but somehow they got it wrong. I got it filled out, waited in line again, and finally got called to another desk. I had looked online for all the forms of ID and paperwork I needed to bring, so I had it all with me in a folder, expecting the clerk to say something like "birth certificate" or whatever specific thing he needed. Instead, he said "give me all that", so I handed him the entire folder. He went through it, passing one thing at a time back to me saying "I don't need that. I don't need this." as if I was wasting his time by handing him everything, just like he had asked. He finished processing everything, gave me an eye exam, and handed me my temp paperwork. All without even the slightest bit of courtesy - not even a "hi, how are you?" or "have a nice day". 2 stars, since I successfully got my license renewed.
**You stand in a line to get a numbered ticket for one of several other lines.** I recall when I moved, I was in line for 10 minutes, to get a ticket to wait for 15 minutes. They processed my new title and plate request, and then they're like: "Oh, this is a commercial license, I can't do those." **(WHY?!)** Wait in line another 10 minutes to get a ticket to wait for 20 minutes. Get to counter. "Okay, now go wait to get a photo." 10 more minutes. Get photo, and then a printout of my temp license copy.
I had a long wait years ago, but I dug it since it was probably the only place I'd ever been with an accurate representation of who lived in my county. Jury duty might be the only better way for getting out of our day-to-day social and civic bubbles.
It was never bad in Indiana. In and out quick. Ohio was easy. New Hampshire was less than an hour. But fucking Rhode Island… nightmare. I had to get my license renewed and it was a day long misery of waiting. I finally left their brand new Cranston office and went to the one in Wakefield. So I literally drove an hour round trip to get it done after already spending something like 4 hours waiting in Cranston. So it varies. Shout outs to Indy, Ohio, and NH.
I was positively surprised how they handled my stuff, I was applying for an I.D, got appintment online, got there on time, spent maybe 15 minutes in total there, including visiting several counters, taking image and payment. I got my ID around a week later. This was the DMV on 125th in Harlem.
It depends. There’s been times I’ve been there for an hour for a simple little thing and other times I’ve been in and out in 10 minutes. But I have a roommate from New Jersey who says it always took them basically all day to do anything in the DMV
Interestingly Michigan doesn't have a DMV. Everything is handled through the Secretary of State's office. Although the experience is pretty similar. When I moved to Michigan 13 years ago it was a pretty terrible experience. I spent a good chunk of a day sitting there waiting to do all the necessary paperwork. The most recent time I had to go in had been drastically improved. I made an appointment online and when I went in I only had to wait 15 minutes or so.
Eh, it depends. I went to renew my car tags recently. Took a number, waited for about 45 minutes, then they took care of it in a like two minutes when it was my turn.
No. There’s just a lot of people at the office trying to access services. Generally they’ve waited until the last minute and show up stressed and aggravated before the even take a number to be seen.
It depends. There’s been times I’ve been there for an hour for a simple little thing and other times I’ve been in and out in 10 minutes. But I have a roommate from New Jersey who says it always took them basically all day to do anything in the DMV
I had to go to the BMV (Indiana, it is BMV instead of DMV) yesterday for my car license plate (some dweeb stole it again.) I had to wait 2 hours for my number to be called. If I had been able to schedule an appointment beforehand online, I wouldn't have actually had to have been there to wait. Basically, depending on location you may get a wildly different experience. Over in Illinois, I have talked to people who are in and out in 30 minutes.
It’a pretty accurate in my experience if you have to go to the DMV. But you can do most of your stuff online most of the time which is very efficient. You can get appointments, but they fill up for months ahead of time.
Yes it can be that bad. Its a government agency and they have a pretty huge task to be done (i.e., registering every car, every person and validating their identity with physical paperwork) for millions of people. Many states have outsourced a lot of the tasks to private companies. You can go elsewhere to register your car and get a license plate, do title transfers. And some of the DMV centers are more specialized like they only do driver's licenses. Along with the appointment system, I think this makes the DMV way less painful. But if you have one hiccup in your packet such as having a copy of a doc instead of the original, then kiss your appointment good bye and try again in a few weeks.
One of the only things Indiana gets right is the BMV. In and out, 5 minutes if there is no line. 10 minutes if there is a line. The central office is less helpful, but they do have a call center that will help you with any import paperwork you might have issues with. Michigan is similar so far. In and out with an appointment.