02.05.12
Bureaucratic mare
Horrendous day of faffing on Monday.
We got a bigger car on Saturday (Zafira) but it was untaxed. Not only that but previous owner was disabled so we had to go to the DVLA (in Nottingham) to change the tax status of the car.
They needed a valid MOT certificate (got), the V5 cert (got), and proof of insurance. Annoyingly the new insurers wouldn’t send a pdf via email so we’d have to wait for one in the post. Hmm, not a plan with a car with no tax disc sitting on the road.
Phone call to insurers. “Oh we’ll fax you a copy”. As we’re not in the 1990′s we don’t have a fax machine. “Oh go to the DVLA and ask them to phone us and we’ll fax it through to them”. Sound idea.
So we got to the DVLA. “No we can’t get faxes through here.” So couldn’t tax it. Grr. After a think we figured that Ruth’s brother-in-law would have a fax machine. He did! So they faxed a certificate through to him.
By this time we didn’t have enough time to get back to the DVLA before I was due to teach a Pilates class in Belper. So R and J had to stay in Derby while I did that. I reckoned it would be best if I went straight to Nottingham after my class. Once there I noticed all the big signs up saying “We don’t accept faxed copies”. Aargh!
Luckily they’d recently tweaked things to allow faxed copies (but not photocopies apparently). They also allow pdfs wot have been printed (what’s the difference?)
So eventually the thing gets taxed. After lots of faff and driving (about 90 miles in all) and stress.
Hint to remember – never buy an untaxed car!
Darren said,
May 16, 2012 at 9:53 pm
Bugger, I could have saved you the hassle if I’d known. I had a similar issue when I bought the ZX. On that occasion driving to the DVLA in Nottingham wasn’t an option, as the only car I had was the one I needed to tax (before I could drive it to the DVLA to tax it etc. etc., you see the paradox!).
After complaining to the man at the DVLA on the phone, he let me into the fact that there is a loophole in this one in that you can tax the car without the V5 that says its of the wrong class. If you fill in the form from the post office that would you have to if you had lost the V5, you can tax it there and then. You then simply have to post the “lost V5″ form to the DVLA and they then register the car in your name with the correct tax code (PLG) and send you a new V5. Magic.