FUCK THE DMV

WHY THE CHEAPEST OPTION USES A STAMP

My automobile registration is coming due. I had options. I could call the DMV and pay over the phone. I’m serious. Calling the DMV is an option. Of course, by the time I got off hold and paid, I’d probably owe late fees.

I could mail a check for $184 to the DMV. It’s a 1974 Chevrolet Nova. $184 to register a fifty-two-year-old car!

I could pay from a kiosk. How exactly does that work? Kind of an ATM for the DMV? Is there a line? Do I have to deal with a snarky AI? I’m betting the kiosk doesn’t take paper checks—credit or debit card only. It sounds like paying online—except I drive somewhere to do it. I bet there’s a fee. More about paying online next.

Yep, I could go online to the DMV web site and use a credit or debit card and pay $229. That’s an extra $45 for processing fees. Really?! Processing fees. What exactly are they processing? And who is doing the processing? It’s an electronic transaction—no human interaction. Do I still pay the processing fee if I use the kiosk?

That’s like buying a movie ticket online and paying an extra $2.50 for handling fees. What handling?! Who’s doing the handling? They eliminated a job and charge you for that non-person!

The DMV is worse because those people are paid with our tax dollars. This got me thinking. The state of California could greatly reduce staffing at the DMV by simply joining the rest of us in the twenty-first century. This would save taxpayers millions of dollars.

I ran the numbers. They are rough but stay with me. There are over 36 million registered vehicles in the state of California. Each one of those vehicles must be registered annually. Eliminate Saturdays and Sundays, don’t worry about holidays for this example, and there are two hundred sixty working days in the year.

That means, on an average day, almost 140,000 vehicles must be registered.

That’s 140,000 envelopes someone must open.

That’s 140,000 checks someone must process. Even if it’s just stamping them on the back, stamping 140,000 checks will take some time.

That’s 140,000 vehicles someone enters into the system as current.

Then somebody still has to take the checks to the bank.

To break things up, there are two hundred and fourteen DMV field offices in California. That means each office gets six hundred fifty registration checks each day. Of course, that’s just an average. A little DMV office in some Podunk backwater of the state is only going to get a dozen checks on a busy day. Meanwhile, the DMV office in San Diego probably processes two or three times the average. It probably takes one dedicated employee to process all those vehicle registrations every day. Maybe two employees at some of the busier offices.

Stop for a moment—think of those numbers. My fifty-year-old Nova cost $184 to register. My 2019 Tundra truck cost $466 to register. Getting an average cost to register a vehicle is nearly impossible. Let’s use something halfway between these two. Let’s say the cost to register a vehicle in California is, on average, $325. That number is certainly low. Based on that, the DMV takes in more than $45 million in registration fees every single business day. Yet somehow the cheapest option for them—the option requiring human interaction—opening envelopes, handling paper checks, data entry, and trips to the bank—is the one with no processing fee attached.

And what do they do with all that money? I said $45 million dollars A DAY. That’s almost $12 billion a year. I thought it was designated for road maintenance. Have you driven on a California highway recently? Could someone please kick out a million dollars or so and fill in the pothole at the end of my block?

Here’s a suggestion. The DMV stops accepting registration payments through the mail. They also no longer accept paper checks—only credit or debit cards.

Pay online.

Pay at a kiosk.

Pay by telephone using an automated service.

Come to the DMV in person. If you opt for this last choice, there’s an additional $25 fee because you’re taking up someone’s time.

If you absolutely must pay with a check, there is a $100 nuisance fee. I mean there is some processing going on here. An actual DMV employee must set their coffee cup aside, sigh dramatically, and perform paperwork on behalf of a taxpayer.

This will eliminate all the ambiguous processing, saving taxpayers over $12 million a year. That’s the combined salary the state pays one full-time employee from each of the two hundred and fourteen offices to process the 140,000 daily checks.

Or, about 25% of the registration fees collected in a single day.

Or one tenth of one percent of the fees collected in a year.

That number blows my mind.

And it just blows.

So, I paid for my registration.

I didn’t bother to call them on the phone.

I didn’t go to the DMV or some vague kiosk.

I wrote out a paper check for $184 and placed it inside the envelope they provided. Then I took it to the post office and mailed it. Because, as it now stands, there is no processing fee if you use technology from the last century.