Car Tax Fiasco
The new car tax rules came into force on 1 October 2014 but it seems that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) online system was unable to cope, leaving thousands of their customers unable to renew their car tax.
The DVLA said that their website had seen “an unprecedented volume of traffic”, the result of which saw some frustrated customers spending up to thirteen hours trying to renew their vehicle tax online. Considering that the new system was just about to start one would have expected the DVLA to have anticipated an increase in the volume of traffic to their website, however it seems they did not, as a statement from a DVLA spokesman suggests “More than 270,000 people successfully used our online car tax service yesterday – that’s 30,000 more than on the same day last year. We are currently experiencing unprecedented demand which means that some customers may be experiencing slow response times or having difficulty accessing the service” the spokesman added “We are of course very sorry for any inconvenience and we are urgently investigating to improve service quality for the minority of our customers that are experiencing issues”. Problems experienced by users varied from not being able to access the website at all to finding that the site just crashed again and again during the process of renewing their vehicle tax, annoyingly for some customers the phone system at the DVLA also appeared to be suffering with similar problems as callers were left hanging on or their call was just left unanswered. The DVLA suggested that anyone experiencing problems with their online or telephone car tax renewal systems should visit their local post office if they needed to urgently renew their vehicle tax.
The DVLA kept their customers updated via Twitter, apologising and explaining that they were suffering problems with their website.
“We are currently experiencing high volumes of traffic to our online car tax service, please try later. Sorry for the inconvenience”
“We’re urgently investigating why some of you are having problems using our online car tax service tonight. Sorry for any inconvenience”
“Our online car tax system is working. Sorry if you are having difficulties but please keep trying”
“Unprecedented demand tonight. We built to scale but 6000 a minute is causing slow response. Around 250K have taxed tonight so keep trying”
It is not known whether anyone caught without tax whilst on their way to the post office to tax their vehicle, as advised by the DVLA, will have their fine waived due to the circumstances.
Special Thanks Phil Long for providing the image.