I recently had my car serviced and I had the garage take it to motor licensing to have it inspected and I assumed have the plates swapped for the new white plates. On picking up my car I noticed that I still had the old yellow plates. The garage told me that my plates were not ready and the person also made a negative comment about the entire process. He said licensing would contact me when they were ready. Yesterday I was driving behind a vehicle that had a number only 11 numbers different to mine and he had white plates. A similar experience occurred last summer with another car I have with the same garage but then I just assumed the licensing people were not yet organised for the new plates. Are my experiences plausible or is the garage just being lazy and not wanting to fit the plates for me?
Auntie’s answer: To start with, it doesn’t make sense to me that the garage would deliberately not pick up your plates if they were ready. I think if they were renewing your registration on your behalf, they would have no choice but to take the new plates from the Department of Vehicle and Drivers’ Licensing (DVDL) and attach them to your car. I also don’t think the task would be very onerous for someone who services cars for a living.
In addition, the renewal of your registration won’t necessarily correlate with the production of your new plates.
A DVDL official, while acknowledging that a difference of only 11 numbers between your plate and the new one you saw was very close, also said that didn’t mean that those two plates would be finished at the same time.
The way the system is meant to work is that DVDL is publishing a list on its website of registration numbers for which the new replacement plates are available to be exchanged. The aim is for the list to be updated every month, but that doesn’t always happen.
There is no schedule for the production of plates, the official explained, but the staff at DVDL continues to work through replacing plates in numerical order.
I guess you have to keep checking for an updated list or you can call the department at 945-8344 to inquire if your new plate is ready. I realise this is not ideal but they do have a lot of plates to get through.
My plate does not expire until next December, so can I wait until then to exchange it?
All of the plates are ready, it’s just that nobody knows where they are located. Would you like to go help put 50 thousand plates in numerical order?
I had my registration renewed last August and they haven’t printed the plates yet!
Same with me. At the time they told me that they would be ready in a couple of weeks. A month later I called them a couple of times to see if they were ready. The last time I called the person on the other end of the phone was so rude I decided not to bother calling back. Hopefully they will be ready when I renew my licence in August of this year but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Cant help but notice the posters initial idea was to blame DVDL for the plate arrival schedule & then accuse his garage for being lazy , as his back-up , when it is nothing to do with the vehicle service provider. I do hope Karma comes to an internal engine component of yours soon…
On February 21st 2018 you stated, “Well, it looks like DVDL is trying, and has created a list of registration plates that are ready to be picked up, which will be updated every two weeks.” It look like every 8 weeks instead.
I don’t think it has been updated once since they provided the list back in February. And their website is down half the time – as usual.
Perhaps you should look on their site, as there is another list (posted April 20th).