[Rolebama]

I passed my Driving Test for the second* time in 1980. I sent my Licence back seven times because they could not get my name right on it. I finally decided that the seventh attempt was probably the closest, so I kept it. In the meantime, I got stopped regularly by the Police because on a check the car would show all relevant paperwork OK, but the Keeper did not have a Licence. I spent many hours at the side of the road showing my Licence and pointing out the short interval where I now had Issue Number 8 on the Licence. On one occasion DVLA even denied ever sending a Licence to my address. On reaching 70 I sent it off for my photo ID free replacement. It came back, as expected, with yet another re-hash of my name. This year I decided to just do it online. I was met with a refusal, because, assumingly, their records and my Licence didn't match. (The online mechanism even denied my Driver Number.) Using their Chat Line I was told to do it by post with relevant paperwork to prove my name. I complied and for the very first time in 40+years, I received a Licence with my name correctly spelt and properly hyphenated on it.
*I passed my Test in the Army in the late 60s, but hadn't got around to sending it off to exchange for a civilian one. It became void upon my leaving the Army.

[Mark07]

After 46 years, the bureaucracy finally worked 🎉

[jamauk]

I had an interesting issue recently where the DVLA just couldn't get it right.

After reapplying after being disqualified I started the learning process again at the beginning of March, I had to get a licence check code for my (useless) driving instructor, this took the DVLA 2 weeks to fix. With a series of phone calls and online chats, the DVLA claiming that my licence did not exist, something I made several complaints about because I was able to book and pass my theory test.

After the 2 week wait I was able to view my licence information and provide my instructor with the check code. Unexpectedly last week I received a new licence in the post with a letter explaining that they had investigated and found a fault with the previous licence and had issued me with a new licence.

The only difference is the issue number has increased by 1, which seems a totally pointless and costly exercise when at most a simple letter telling me that the previous issue had been rectified would have sufficed.

Another example of bureaucracy that although pointless, actually worked.