Pardon my French, all good people of D.C....

[theHandpuppet]

... but your Dept. of Motor Vehicles is nothing but a bullshit scam.

Today my partner and I got an adjudication letter from the D.C. Dept of Motor Vehicles informing us that she had failed to pay a parking ticket and asked us to pay up!!!

Well, only a few problems with that. We don't even go to D.C. (we live in WV). We don't own an Oldsmobile, never have! We do not have a car with that license plate number, issued in Maryland! So we don't know whose car this really is belonging to someone who parked in a loading zone on Georgia Ave. in the District of Columbia back in January, but we appreciate that they sent us a self-addressed envelope with which to send a payment.

Jeezil, what a scam. Why do you folks put up with this shit... and why the hell should we? We don't even live there!

[elleng]

1. The scam's bad,

but the service was worse!

(I've been in Maryland since '06 so haven't had to deal with them, thank goodness!!!)

You could 'help' by writing them, and telling them what you've told us, without the expletives. Give them an 'alert' that there's something wrong with their systems.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. What else is new?

Nearly identical plates causing major hassle for Virginia woman

SOUTH RIDING, Va. -- A Northern Virginia woman has been hassled for months over two unpaid parking tickets issued to a car with nearly identical plates to hers.

Clare Pilkington's license plate is PICKLS and is registered to a Chevy Tahoe. The unpaid tickets were written for a Lexus with the license plate P1CKLS. A WTOP Ticketbuster investigation found the discrepancy and also revealed vastly different responses between Montgomery County and District of Columbia officials.
....

However, the D.C. DMV refused to re-open Pikington's case, although the agency received both the Virginia DMV statement and Montgomery County's response.

"Please inform your listeners that they should provide D.C. DMV with all of the supporting documentation when they submit their request for adjudication. If a customer decides to appeal a ticket, then only the original information submitted will be considered," writes D.C. DMV spokesperson Vanessa Newton.

© 2014 WTOP. All Rights Reserved.

Caught up in the bureaucratic nightmare that is the D.C. DMV

By Lori Aratani, Published: March 22

Baltimore resident Charlie Haupt figures that if he’s lucky, around June 2015 he’ll hear from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles on his appeal of the parking ticket the agency says he received in February 2012.

And he has his fingers crossed that if the department accepts his argument — that the ticket can’t possibly be his since it was issued to a Ford and he drives a Nissan — he will be refunded the $110 he paid as part of the appeals process. But that probably won’t happen until later in 2015, about 31 / 2 years after the ticket was issued.

There are bureaucracies and then there is the D.C. DMV, which seems to have outdone many government agencies in creating a level of frustration among its customers, particularly those who get caught in its byzantine ticket-appeals process. Granted, departments of motor vehicles have never enjoyed stellar reputations for customer service, but recent stories from those who have been caught in the District’s bureaucracy suggest a level of frustration that is hard to match.

Want to adjudicate a ticket by mail? You’ll wait an average of 150 days for an answer from a hearing examiner, according to DMV officials. Appeal that decision and it could take an average of 20 months to get an answer. But the good news is it will take only six to eight weeks to get your money back.