By Kathryn O'Donoghue
The DVLA's recent Orwell-esque advertising campaign - 'You can't escape the computer' - certainly served its purpose of reminding me that my car tax was due. However, after the hassle of traipsing down to the Post Office - making sure to remember and dig out all the relevant documentation - and queuing for hours just to get a slip of paper, I almost wish it hadn't.
And while the DVLA purports to have made it possible to avoid the lengthy queues and renew your tax online, in reality, this is as good as impossible. To do so, you need a new style MOT - that the majority of garages do not provide - and what's more, every time I tried to go to the relevant website, it was undergoing essential maintenance. Maybe it had had an argument with the 'computer'.
I am outraged by the cheek of the DVLA, which is essentially trying to intimidate and scare drivers in these adverts. To boast about how great its online systems are when it comes to issuing fines - but to fail to provide an efficient means of paying online - just makes you think that, rather than providing a better service, the majority of its efforts have been concentrated on ripping off innocent drivers who can't get to the Post Office outside of work hours.
Talking about being purely driven by money, the DVLA has also been selling drivers' addresses for £2.50 each, and by flogging 2.5 million of them between April 2005 and March 2006, has made a tidy profit of £6.5 million. While many people are uncomfortable with their personal data being sold to legitimate companies, the fact that some of these addresses were sold to convicted criminals gives even more cause for concern.
Ultimately, the DVLA should stop wasting money on expensive advertising and start making their online systems more reliable and customer friendly. While these measures are clearly designed to remove reckless drivers from the roads, which is of course a good thing, their methods have to be called into question. But, in an organisation where over 100 employees have recently been cautioned, and 14 dismissed, for distributing pornographic material over corporate email, what more can we expect?
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