"Peak performance, every one, every time."
That's the Virginia DMV motto. And when I first walked in, I believed it. A person standing at the door, directing people to the correct area. A large waiting area with powerful ceiling fans to keep it fairly comfortable. Pleasant lighting.
But that's as far as it got. It took us three trips to the DMV to get our new licenses today. And it ALMOST took four, but the final rep took pity on us and stayed late and allowed us to call the dealer where we bought our car and have them fax the sales receipt.
Why would we need to have the sales receipt faxed? We had the title! We had the registration from Utah, the safety and emissions, and proof of insurance!
Ah, but in Virginia, if you've owned the car for less than one year, you have to prove you've paid sales tax on the car.
That little fact is clearly stated on one of the pages of the photocopied documents they handed us. In small print, at the end of a long paragraph about dealer transactions. On the back.
And you are married? So the name on your wife's birth certificate doesn't match that on her driver's license? Ah, well, if you look in the small print at the bottom of a different page, it mentions that if your proof of legal presence documentation doesn't exactly match your proof of identity, you need a chain of identity document. So for those strange cases where somebody got married, they need to bring a marriage certificate as well.
These details were slowly revealed to us over the course of our many trips to the DMV today.
Yes, it's all there, in print, somewhere on the website. But -- I'm an avid reader, and I still couldn't bring myself to read all those irrelevant details to find the few grains of painfully relevant stuff.
So I was thinking about an online paperwork assistant. You select the task you need to do from a list of common tasks. Just moved in to Virginia? Here are the three most common tasks you'll need to do, just click here and they'll all be selected.
Okay. Step one: you'll need to provide a proof of identity. Here are the acceptable docs, select the one you'll be bringing. Your Utah driver's license? Great.
Step two: proof of legal presence. Here are the acceptable docs, select the one you'll be bringing. Oh! I see you're bringing a birth certificate. Is the name on it the same as the one on your Utah license? No? You'll also need to bring a marriage certificate. That okay? Great.
That's all for the driver's license. Set your Utah driver's license, birth certificate, and marriage license aside. You'll need to bring those in.
Now, for your car registration. Do you have a lien on the car? (And click here if you don't know what a lien means!)
Etc.
Wouldn't be that hard to build. If somebody from the Virginia DMV reads this and wants me to put together a nifty web app that walks people through this process, I'm willing to do it. Heck, I'd do it as a public service.
It would take me less time than I spent today trying to get my new license.