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The MD MVA's has two methods.  1)Pay your $9 or $12 (noncertified or certified) and it gets mailed to the address on your Driver's License or 2)get an MVA PIN (approx 5-10 business days to get it mailed to you) and then you can get a PDF of your record.  Neither are that great.  However, the third choice works somewhat better.  Go to any office on a saturday, walk straight to the DR cashier & within however long it takes to fill out the form (if you haven't already done so) + 1 minute, it's in your hand.  Guess which is my favorite method?


Jyri

Hank Rearden wrote:

"Sir, you need to MAIL us the old BC plates before we halt your premium payments." (!!!!).  I had to go back the the DMV, stand in line for ages, have some poor sot rummage through the pile of discarded plates to find my old plates, mail them back to BC

How long ago did this happen? ICBC should be fully aware that it is the responsibility of the DMV to collect the plates; ICBC does the exact same thing themselves, and sends the plates back to their jurisdiction of origin - the plates should not be discarded after collection.

Hank Rearden wrote:

And, at least in CA one has a choice of insurers.  State Farm, All State, whatever.  In BC it's basically ICBC or you don't drive.  Now that sucks!

This I will argue: ICBC is the only choice, but it is very affordable - my costs with ICBC were light-years ahead of anything I could have got in California. I was floored when I learned how cheap my rates were with ICBC. ICBC is one of-or-is the cheapest auto insurance in Canada.

When I went to register my auto in BC, I made no appointment but there was no queue in the office. I had my new licence and new registration, plates etc in less than an hour (this included a visit to an Autoplan office across the street to set up my insurance and receive new plates).

Altivec wrote:

Estimated population of Calfornia as of 2005: 36,132,147
Estimated population of British Columbia as of 2005: 4,254,522

That might be why you got better service in BC...

That should be irrelevant; with more people, California's services should be scaled to the appropriate size. Some people could argue that a larger corporate entity (company, state, whatever) would have greater resources to offer their customers more services.

Taxes in California are at a similar level to those in Canada, so revenues are there too. ICBC is government-owned vehicle registration, licencing and insurance, as opposed to California, where the state government has a lighter burden with only vehicle registration and licencing.

Hank Rearden wrote:

Then you went to the wrong insurer in CA.  In both CA and in Alberta I have had much lower rates with private insurers with the same coverage and the same vehicle than I have ever had in BC.  We're talking differences of several hundred dollars a year.  Oh, and better service too.

I did save a decent sum of money in CA thanks to the woman I spoke to the day I bought my new car. Having just handed over my cheque for my new car and receiving the keys, I called my insurer to ensure I was covered for the drive home.

The woman with the company's 1-800 # asks me about the coverage on my old car. It had died recently and was sitting in my driveway waiting for disposal. I say I'm getting rid of it in the coming week. She happily tells me that the cost of insuring both cars is less than just insuring the new one: the hunk of junk's insurance was less than the multi-car discount I would receive for insuring both vehicles. That was good customer service.

So I kept the clunker and eventually got it running again, although it wouldn't go over 35 mph. I used it as a go-cart for short runs within a few miles of home, grocery shopping etc.

No, I did not have a rusting hulk on my front yard. The old car looked fairly respectable on the outside and it sat neatly in my driveway; I washed it once in a while and it never leaked a single drop of fluid. A doo-hickey had blown in the engine and it wouldn't run well, and I was sick of fixing it, but its usefulness lived on.

beaverfever wrote:

Taxes in California are at a similar level to those in Canada, so revenues are there too.

Should be, but they're not.

beaverfever wrote:

Aqua OS X wrote:

Should be, but they're not.

That always amazed me when I lived in CA. Where do the taxes go? Obviously not to healthcare or education, and many of the roads are bad, so the money isn't going there. Does it just vanish?

I did too, until I went to the county government buildings in San Bernardino. The largest county in the country, poorest county in the state, but the buildings where the county supervisors work are literally built (and recently renovated) of marble, while the kids go to school in double wide 'temporary' buildings that are never replaced with permanent buildings. Corruption is rampant, elections rules are routinely violated. I call it a third world county.

Some counties in CA spend their money more wisely, and it shows, but I then go to other states that seem to be able to do so much more with less.

beaverfever wrote:

A great deal of political effort goes into doing nothing at all in California.

Sounds familiar.  Seems like that's the way in any municiipality, state, country... heck, even large institutions or corporations.  Lots of bureaucrats with (supposedly) great ideas that either don't get funded, get partially funded, or have their funds stolen or otherwise misused.

Most places are lucky to go two steps forward and one back.  More often than not its one forward and two back.

Does rededit remember when there was a campaign to make a 51st state out of Northern California and Southern Oregon. They planned on calling it the State of Jefferson.