In the middle of a global pandemic where social distancing is required, the Registry of Motor Vehicles decided to apply old unpaid traffic tickets to customers’ records and generate Administrative Hearing Letters to hundreds if not thousands of customers.
These letters require the unlucky recipients to report to a designated Registry of Motor Vehicles “service center” by a certain date. If the customer fails to appear, the RMV will indefinitely revoke the customer’s license. One customer described this letter as a “punch in the gut.”
The letter provides absolutely no information regarding what triggered it. It simply threatens to suspend the customer’s license due to a “complaint regulatory judgment.” There is no description of the offense. Most of the violations that I have seen are not public safety-related. They’re old speeding tickets and citations for minor offenses. There’s absolutely no reason why the Registry could not have waited until after the Covid-19 pandemic to impose these revocations based on civil motor vehicle infractions. Of course, the Registry continues public-safety related sanctions such as indefinite immediate threat suspensions. But these are different. The vast majority are not safety-related. They don’t involve DUI convictions or reckless driving.
The Registry cannot handle the demand that they’ve created by sending out these letters at the most inopportune time. When customers call the Suspension Department at 857-368-8200, they wait approximately two and a half hours, after which time the call is disconnected if there is not a representative available to answer it. I have had customers try for days to get through.
The Registry only hands out a very limited number of hearing forms each day at each “service center.” People start lining up around 7:00 AM in the freezing cold weather. This means that those unfortunate souls who make the mistake of going to the Registry during normal business hours are denied hearings and told to come back early the next day.
Once again, the Registry has failed at the simple task of customer service.