DVLA Thanks for nothing!

It is now 3 months since I applied to DVLA for a provisional class C1  licence. The latest scenario was when ringing DVLA to enquire how my application was progressing I was told that they were awaiting the medical report back from my Doctor. This request was sent out 2 weeks ago. Next course of action was to ring my doctor who informed me that they had not received anything from the DVLA. Unbelievable! Back on the phone to the DVLA only to establish that they had sent the paperwork to the wrong surgery!!! More papers were sent out  to the correct surgery and it has been confirmed they got them this time.

In the meantime we had arranged a visit to the Autotrail motorhome in Grimsby. Due to the restraints of public transport we were going to hire a rental car. Upon arrival at the rental car depot I produced the receipt to say that the DVLA had my licence. The receptionist rang DVLA to confirm my details only to be told that their computer had been down all day and they were unable to supply my details. A Government Department and they don’t have a back up system? What sort of Mickey Mouse outfit is this? Public servants that are not serving the public interest’s, that’s obvious. Because of this the rental car company were unable to hire me a car so it looked like our tour of the Autotrail factory was going to be a non event.

Due to all this fiasco we had missed the 6pm bus back to March and the next and last bus was 8.20pm. I was furious by this stage and rang Mick, our landlord. He told us to catch the train and he would meet us at the March station which is on the edge of town, a good half  hour walk back to the apartment. When Mick picked us up he showed us some rail options that would get us to Grimsby on time. The down side was that we would have to leave March before 6am when there are no buses to catch the 7.07am train from Peterborough. It was then that Mick offered to run us into Peterborough by car as a birthday treat for me. This offer was gratefully accepted. We then investigated the return options which got us home by just after 6pm. This was all booked on the internet so we just had to pick up the tickets this morning at the station.