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[Matchless]

 

Project 2 now has an MoT so Im all ready to tax it and try it out but there's a snag....
It is registered as disabled so I was faced with a last minuite dash across Nottingham to the LVO tonight to get it re-registered as PLG then taxed, cant do it at the Post Office, have to do it in person. Sodding beaurocrats!

But the Post Office cant manage to deliver a First Class letter containing my insurance   so I am stuck until Monday at least, the LRO only works Mon-Fri 9 - 5 so I have to take holiday to tax a bloody car

[ClarCE]

The paperwork and mindless red tape in this country are an absolute joke.

I'm not much looking forward to when I buy and build my kit car because of the amount of hoops I've read about people having to jump through to actually get them on the road.

Combined with MOT testers who have no guidance as to what to do, its bloody shocking. How hard can it actually be?!!

[Kevin Wood]

Vehicle licensing is a total nightmare. The horror stories I have heard are unbelieveable.

The only way to do it is to turn up, in person, with all documentation completed, wait in the queue of shady car dealers and refuse to leave the counter until you're sorted. Take some sandwiches if it's before lunch time.

To make matters worse, each VRO seems to make up their own rules so what works in one town won't work in another. Sometimes it'a just a paperwork exercise, sometimes they need to see the car. Sometimes they need to inspect the car but the inspector bloke is on holiday so it's hard luck for 3 weeks. If they need to see the car they'll tell you you can't drive it to them because it's not registered. You then get the car to them at vast expense and they say "yep, that's certainly a car", stamp some paperwork and job done.  

Don't bother trying to phone them. All phone lines lead to a clueless bint in Swansea who'll tell you that VROs "aren't equipped to receive calls" what? no phones? Still on smoke signals, are we? Or have you been upgraded to semaphore already?

Arrrrgghh!

Good luck..

Kevin

[Marks DTM Calib]

The stupid things are

a) To get free car tax due to a disability is easy to do.....
b) To then start paying full license is a nightmare
c) The car remains as disabled tax class when the ownership changes

The civil service realy is bloody useless......

[Matchless]

Im thinking of gnawing my own leg off, then I can claim disability, a free tax disc and I wont have to go to the LVLO cos the car is already in disabled class, can do it all at the Post Office.

But offer to pay the full whack and not attempt to sponge off the rest of the country and I have to take a days holiday for the privilege of standing in a queue for hours.

The disabled entitlement attaches to the previous owner who had the missing leg so when the car is sold why doesnt it revert to PLG???  Surely someone claiming a benefit should be the one required to prove entitlement, not the poor sod who is offering to pay full whack

[STMO123]

Im thinking of gnawing my own leg off, then I can claim disability, a free tax disc and I wont have to go to the LVLO cos the car is already in disabled class, can do it all at the Post Office.

But offer to pay the full whack and not attempt to sponge off the rest of the country and I have to take a days holiday for the privilege of standing in a queue for hours.

The disabled entitlement attaches to the previous owner who had the missing leg so when the car is sold why doesnt it revert to PLG???  Surely someone claiming a benefit should be the one required to prove entitlement, not the poor sod who is offering to pay full whack

We're starting to sound bitter now

[Markie]

....but this may just be quicker and less pain than waiting on the mail  

[theolodian]

Or give it back to the PO, have him get free tax, and then transfer it back to you.  

[hotel21]

Or give it back to the PO, have him get free tax, and then transfer it back to you.  

..... then when you drive around on the nil rate disabled tax, be prepared to get nicked for it and pay, on average, 5 and a half times the rate due to DVLA per week untaxed since you owned it, as well as the fine for having an untaxed vehicle....  

[theolodian]

Or give it back to the PO, have him get free tax, and then transfer it back to you.  

..... then when you drive around on the nil rate disabled tax, be prepared to get nicked for it and pay, on average, 5 and a half times the rate due to DVLA per week untaxed since you owned it, as well as the fine for having an untaxed vehicle....  

It's not about the money.  At least then they are the ones that have to run around after you.  Public service my @$$.

[Ronald_McBurger]

TIP with the LVLO. Turn up at about 3.45pm. You will still be dealt with but will avoid the 3 hour queue!

Changing from disabled class to PLG is a pain in the arse. Worth it in the end, but why the post office insurance Pete? Thay are the polish on the turd as far as I am concerned.

[Varche]

I had to smile to myself as I read this thread. I too used to think that beaurocracy in Britain was terrible. It is but not a patch on Spain. Spain is the only country in the world where you are well advised to employ the services of a gestor  a person who fills forms in, gets the right things photocopied and applies on your behalf for a small payment.

We went through the mother and father of an experience in order to convert our Omega into a Spanish plated car. There was no documentation of the process end to end and no one actually seemed to know it. Beaurocrats here make life hard to justify their existence and once you are in a government job it is very very difficult to get sacked.

The First step was to get a technical document (Spanish V5) for the car. That went smoothly as did the Spanish MOT which was every bit as thorough as a UK one but lasts two years on cars of less than 10 years old.

Then it all went downhill. The problem being the Trafico ( Like the DVLA/LVO).

Here is a typical visit. Arrive at opening time 9.30. Queue at a counter for advice on what is required. Go over road to photocopying office and pay a small amount for an unbelievable number of copies of every type of document you possess. Every official building in Spain has such a privately run copying office nearby. Go back in and queue and pay for a form - each form you want costs about 20p, there are none anywhere that you can just help yourself to. Then fill in form and queue elsewhere to pay the fee and get the form stamped to show payment received. First time we tried paying by card or cheque. They only take cash, then take form and a numbered ticket you are given and go upstairs and WAIT and WAIT hours till your number comes up. They only issue enough tickets for that day and then close the issuing counter around 11 a.m. so all the staff can leave exactly at five p.m. .

Then you get to the counter and some bored geezer looks at your mountain of paperwork and finds something wrong e.g. not enough copies of one item and says go off and get x,y or z.(even though he has a photocopier just behind him) It is by now too late to get it and get a new queue ticket so you go home (80 mile round trip) hungry and empty handed having wasted a day. Despite asking is the rest of the application right each time you go they find something else wrong. One day we turned up and it was a local holiday (they have loads of these in Spain) and the place was just closed. In total we made 11 trips to that office.

There is also a transfer tax to pay when you buy or sell a car here of 7% of the cars official book value. That is why most people buy a car here and keep it till death! We avoided both parts of that tax as we proved the car was ours in the UK but had to visit and queue etc at two other offices elsewhere in the city on no less than five occasions.

the final icing on the cake was we had to go all the way to Malaga to the British Consul and pay £120 for a sworn declaration of when we first lived in Spain despite having proof of applying for other official things on the same day.

All this is obviously conducted only in Spanish just to make it even more difficult.

Just thought it might make your next encounter with British  beaurocrats a little easier to swallow!

olive

 

[Andy B]

......
All this is obviously conducted only in Spanish just to make it even more difficult.

........
olive

That'd be me f***ed then. My Spanish is limited to "Two beers please!"