15 February 2007

Steve Pratt - Luddite?

| johnboy
Join the conversation
38

Steve Pratt has had a major whinge about the absence from Civic of a Government shopfront for those who wish to transact with the ACT Government without venturing onto teh sc4ry interweb.

Which is fair enough, it *is* a disgrace that there is no shopfront in the city’s putative CBD. I was, however, struck by this comment:

“I had my own experience this week, waiting 45minutes from 11:30am, standing in a queue with others obviously on precious lunch breaks, to renew my vehicle registration. One can only imagine the congestion during the peak of lunch hour.”

What kind of addled moron is still renewing rego in person?? You fill out the form online and they mail you the sticker fer chrissakes. Leave the shopfronts as a vestigial service for the ever declining numbers of terminal luddites (who, let’s face it, aren’t going to be around very much longer).

Join the conversation

38
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest

Stolen numberplates, while not important enough for police to attend while it is happening, require attendance to pay for new ones.

i see the ct have once again used riotact to research their articles…

JB

Registration renewals can require going over the pits. There are also a plethora of reasons, that you would do well to check for, that require attendance. Betty has listed but 2

Mael, as you’ve lived in Canberra for 4 years technically your car is unregistered. If you have a prang and the insurance company finds out, that’s how they’ll avoid having to pay you out or fixing the car.

Quote JB:
softhead

p0wn! p0wn! p0wn! p0wn! p0wn! p0wn! p0wn!

obviously a tax and not cost recovery on the basis of that scale, take it to the high court and you’d probably win.

Just getting side tracked a little – what pisses me off more is having to fork out $130+ for a licence renewal. Yet, when I lost my wallet a few years ago the replacement cost $30.

You do have to renew your rego in person if you have a gas vehicle (needs an inspection report each time?) or a concession, maybe this is why many people have to do it in person?

VG,

From the media release which you would have been well served to read before jumping in:

I had my own experience this week, waiting 45minutes from 11:30am, standing in a queue with others obviously on precious lunch breaks, to renew my vehicle registration.

I assume very little.

(oh wait, what’s that, the direct quote that it WAS a rego renewal and not something tricky was in the quoted text. Do you deploy these comprehension skills in your professional duties??)

re needing a credit card to pay online – you can use BPay, however I only discovered that option AFTER I’d gone in via Canberra Connect, chosen “Pay rego”, and paid with a credit card as that was the only payment option offered. Then again, I could have read the rego form with its big BPay symbol clearly displayed, more carefully….

Basic car registration can be done over the net. Rego transfers, interstate transfers and other less ordinary rego transactions must be done in person (including if your car needs an inspection). It is a little arrogant to accuse someone of being a luddite when you don’t know the full circumstances of the registration transaction.

Don’t assume

I’m pretty sure that you don’t have to allow time for the rego label to arrive if you choose to pay over the net, at the post office, or over the phone on the day that your rego is due.

I had to wait over 3 weeks for a label to arrive once (since then it has been 2 or 3 days) and the parking inspectors were (are?) like vultures at UC. I never had ‘Unregistered!’ stickers plastered all over my car. As I approached my car one day I saw an inspector hang up his phone and move on; they must have a way of checking on your rego status.

if anyone cares the tuggeranong shopfront is really quiet between 10.30 and 11am. Ive always been straight in and straight out never spent anymore than ten minutes renewing my rego.

Last April, I renewed my rego online from Utah! Teh sticker was waiting for me when I got off the plane, stuck it on and drove home with all my yank loot. What a brilliant system!
That said, sometimes you need to visit the shopfront. I didn’t realise the Civic one was gone. Bugger.

Sad that Steve didn’t notice the shopfront was gone until he himself wanted to use it.

When transferring rego from interstate:
a) You send back the original rego to the State from which you came (you’ll eventually get a refund for the number of months still outstanding).

b) You have to rego your car in the ACT. The ACT mob won’t/don’t have anything to do with your previous registration.

Cumbersome, I agree; but as I understand it, by law you must do it within 3 months – I think.

It’s funny that one of the few people in the ACT with some semblance of power to actually make or inspire changes, chooses instead to whinge on about it.

Ahh, whats wrong with paying rego over the phone. I did mine today and it took me a grand total of 3 minutes. My rego sticker should arive in the mail tomorrow.

I think it says something about Government in the ACT that one of our MLA’s waited in line for 45 minutes

“Electronic paper trail”? You know what I mean!

Paying using the website implies that you have a VISA/Mastercard/AMEX card. For a long time I avoided getting one because I didn’t like the idea of leaving an electronic paper trail of purchases. In the end I caved in and organised a VISA debit card. However, it’s from a different financial institution to the one where my pay is deposited, so I need to wait at least a day for funds to be transferred.

For me, it’s easier just to go to an ATM, get a wad of cash and take that to the government shopfront. However, I’ve not once waited less than half an hour in Woden.

i always pay my rego in person after once doing it over the web 6 weeks before it was due and not being sent anything. i called up and asked where it was and had been told it had been printed and sent, but that they could print and send me another one but i would have to promise to destroy the other one if it turned up. that didn’t happen either, so i ended up heading into Dickson and making them print me one.

i got two in the mail the next day, and another one the week after that.

astrojax – been down that road before, many times. When you are following legislation by showing up to the motor registry bods (the official place for changing your rego over) and they inform you in their capacity as officials of the state to go away and do it next year, the onus of responsibility is then theirs – you are following instructions by an official.

For your peace of mind, I also took my vehicle over the pits and got a roadworthy BEFORE I tried getting my registration last year, still to no avail.

There is nothing in the Legislation that says I should continue banging my head against a brick wall once I start bleeding. Every reasonable avenue to change my Rego was pursued, and an official told me to go away until next year.

I’ll be telling that to the judge, with records to prove it. I’m sure that given the current state of the judicial system in the ACT (Re: ACT’s favourite citizen) I’ll be left to my own resources to smoke as much pot as I like and drive unregistered and unlicenced for as long as I want with the odd vehicular manslaughter thrown in for good measure.

I have also been pulled over several times in the last few years, and not one copper even blinked twice at my situation.

maelinar,

dunno what the actual state of play is in act, but i suspect it’d be rather like nsw, where there is legislation saying you have to register your vehicle and change your licence to the state of your residence [within certain – short -time limits, like a couple weeks] lest you are technically – and legally – unregistered. i don’t think the police will take any notice of your wrangles with the motor registry bods. and i can’t understand why you don’t just register the car in the act by applying for registration and, maybe, taking the vehicle over the pits. i’m sure your vehicle will be roadworthy?

qld’s acceptance of your rego cash is no barometer of the legality of having an unregistered car. hope you don’t run my children over!

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt1:16 pm 15 Feb 07

You guys should be thankful you don’t have to get your car(s) physically inspected every year, like us New South Welshmen. It’s a bit silly, really, because the pieces of crap that wouldn’t pass inspection don’t get registered anyway. Maybe we need ‘Registration Cameras (TM)’!

JB – stop digging. Nobody wants him using his taxpayer funded lackeys doing his private business at public expense.

Conversely, in your defence, It takes no more intelligence to pay an online bill than it does to log into this website, so it’s not really an ivory tower issue given that aforesaid ‘addled morons’ wouldn’t be able to see the message in the first place…

Yeah I usually use the rego office in dicko to renew – but phone electricity rates etc are all paid online.

A trip to the rego office once every 12 month sis not going to kill me.

Its usually dead at about 1545 anyway – and I get to watch my brothers commissioned graffiti scroll across the 42 inch plasma screen displaying the Canberra Connect TV station

I prefer to pay my car rego in person for the simple fact that I can wait until the day before it is due to pay for it.

If you choose to pay online you have to pay for it 2 weeks in advance to allow for the new sticker to be delivered by mail. That extra pay packet makes a difference to some peoples cash flow!

There I was thinking you were smart enough to realise that the addled moron in question has not only access to the internet but staff who know how to use it.

But once again I’m disppointed.

‘What kind of addled moron is still renewing rego in person??’

when you attack people who dont have access to the interweb, or a PC to gain that access you exhibit arrogance that goes beyond an easy attack on a dilettante politician.

the digital divide is real. its a class seperator.

however from your ivory telecommuting tower you probably never have to mix with these people.

I started at 0700 today – and usually have lunch around 1200 – the type of person above is the thype of tossers I hate.

They usually have a snide comment in the lifts at 1530 – something along the lines of “You going home already” – not realising that they were still having wet dreams about their dog while humping their hand about the time I was arriving at work.

Subsequently – starting at 0700 – I pay (non electronic bills) in person after work.

I am one of those addled morons who have to troddle off to the shopfront every year to attend and be told that they cannot help me to change my registration from Queensland to the ACT, which is my legal obligation under the road rules.

Then, as with every year, I contact them by telephone or via their manager to raise the complaint higher, to be informed to try again next year.

I then return home and buy the Qld registration online because they have absolutely no problems with sending it down here to the ACT, even though the vehicle and myself have been registered as living down here for the last 4 odd years.

All legal hoops passed to within reasonable expectation, I sit on my fat ass until another 12 months has passed and do the entire procedure again, comfortable in the knowledge that the savings I am making by spending less on a Qld Registration is in my back pocket, and not Jon’s.

I used to get pissed off at all the NSW plates in the carpark at the mall, thinking that they were cross border shoppers, until I realised that they too were probably going in every year to try and change their registration like me.

I’m more concerned that SOME people start lunch breaks at 11.30.

Probably the same ones who front up to work at 9.45, get a coffee from the place across the road first up, work from 10.30-10.35, then go outside for a fag or three, work 11.20-11.30…by which time it’s lunch.

renew your rego in person OUTSIDE of peak hours. You find the whole process takes about 20 minutes. Considering the amount of time wasted with ciggie/coffee/mastabatory breaks, 20 mibnutes is sweet FA imho.

And Steve Pratt is none of those disadvantaged people you mentioned now is he?

jb this is one of the most arrogant presumptions you have ever made.

soem peopel dont have computers.

i daresay, soem arent ‘online’.

some prefer to interact with humans instead of sitting around in their underpants all day telecommuting in their home office while they type on cheezel encrusted keyboards.

I’ll point out that, in most major cities, Dickson would be considered part of the CBD (it’s certainly not particularly far away). And I’ve found from experience that the shopfront there is screamingly un-busy, pretty much all the time.

and when you’re standing in that line you’ll wish the folks who could pay over the net had done so!

I have to renew my driver licence some time in the not-too-distant future.

According to the paperwork I received, there is no way to do it other than in person at a shop-front.

This is despite the fact that, as a relatively new Canberran, the photo on my Canberra driver licence is less than 12 months old.

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.