Arlington DMV Metro at Virginia Square — Attraction in Arlington

I don't do this ever (I've never left a one star review for anything), but the skinny hipster looking person with the glasses, undercut, and bun gave me the absolute worst customer service experience of my entire life.

I got there at 340 and got to the window at 5:05. Their policy is they lock the doors at 5 and continue to help everyone that was there before they close. This employee was obviously very upset by the policy and decided to take it out on me. Did everything in their power to try to deny every piece of paperwork I had, and their coworker had to correct them more than once. Made comments to their coworker about how they had plans and had to be out of there by 6. Made a snotty comment to me about how if I'd gotten there before they closed I would have had time to go get my forms (to which I replied that I'd been there for over an hour). I would have been TOTALLY fine if they had been polite about missing paperwork. I get it, I work for the government too and I understand following forms. But they were shockingly rude from the very moment I walked up. I worked in customer service for almost two decades, I am unfailingly polite to people doing those kinds of jobs. It took every single once of my willpower to remain as calm as I did. It literally took me 3 hours after I left to calm down from how over the top rude and horrible the interaction was.

I went to another location 20 minutes away the next day just to reduce the risk of ever having to interact with this human being again in my life. Guess who was working the information booth at the second location? Yep, them of course. The second i saw that I walked out and drove another 20 minutes to Alexandria just to get away from them. What an absolute terror of a human being. If you don't like your job go work somewhere else, you're very clearly not cut out for interacting with the public.

The information booth person was ridiculously nice though, as was their coworker in the next kiosk over, which made it even jarring as I had absolutely not expected them to treat me like that. I feel bad for the coworkers, it must really suck to have to work with someone like that.

My friend said, "that's the location that gave licenses to the 9/11 terrorists, and they've been taking it out on everyone ever since". (Which is true.) Guess that makes sense.

I know complaining about the DMV is just screaming into the void, but I hope this person sees...

This is quite possibly the worst DMV I have ever been to. First off, it’s Arlington so there’s no dedicated parking lot AND they do not validate parking for the nearby garage.

I needed to come in to get my car registration stickers because the DMV’s archaic system did not let me update my mailing address and it was sent to an apartment I haven’t lived at in over 2 years. I checked online, filled out all of the necessary information (name, address, etc.) and scheduled an appointment to come in. Since I was coming in anyway, I also made an appointment to get my driver’s license renewed since I travel a good amount and know the Real ID deadline is coming. Even though I filled out all of my information online already (SINCE THAT STEP IS REQUIRED IN ORDER TO BOOK AN APPOINTMENT), I am handed a paper form at check-in to fill out the exact same information again.

I will say that my ticket number was called very quickly as those with an appointment are given priority. In fact, my ticket was called so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to finish my form. I approach the lady at the desk who is chatting with a few co-workers. She tells me to hand over my documents, license, passport, etc. and to finish my form. Without my documents, I can’t fill out fields like my license ID number… she says it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t need that info anyway and doesn’t look at my form for the rest of the time I was there.

The next 15min are spent with her mumbling instructions to me while talking loud and clear to her friends behind the desk. I didn’t even know my picture was being taken for my license because she was talking to her friend so much. I pay my fees, sign my name on a few more forms and leave. My new license arrived in the mail a few days later with the same expiration date as before… turns out I didn’t need to renew my license until 12 months before it expires. I should have been INELIGIBLE to renew. So i just paid for a license that I will need to renew AGAIN in 2 years. At no point did anyone disclose this information to me. This would have been extremely useful prior to me coming in, signing all of these forms, and PAYING.

Horrible customer service, clear signs of negligence, and incompetency. I would not recommend this DMV branch to anyone and would give it 0...

I usually never post reviews but honestly the experience here today was terrible.. I scheduled an appointment for my permit test at 10:30 am today. I went in at 10:25ish and went to the information desk, the lady at the information desk was nice and helpful. However, when I got my number, I had to wait there for almost 2 hours. I would have been fine if I had to wait for 30 minutes. But 2 hours? I literally had an appointment at exactly 10:30. I don’t know what’s the point of scheduling an appointment if walk-in customers get to go in earlier than me. It was really disappointing. My mom couldn’t find a parking spot so she had to drive around the whole time while I was waiting. When it finally became my turn, I tried to go in because my number was literally called but this other lady in the permit test section desk told me to go out and wait AGAIN. I tried to be understanding since I thought she was probably really busy. However, it took 20-30 minutes for her to call me in after I got my number called. When it finally became my turn, she wanted to check my documents again which I already did with the information desk lady before getting my number. But I just accepted it since I thought it was just the system and pulled out my documents. She looked at my residency documents and simply just rejected them. There was literally a deed and a marriage document. I told her that the name on the deed is my stepfather and we moved into his house from another state and there’s a literal proof that my mom got married to him and his address was on the document. But she said she can’t accept it since my mom’s name isn’t on the deed. Lawd of course it’s not going to be on the deed if it’s his house, ms lady💀. She really wasn’t understanding at all and made me waste my 2 hours, I couldn’t even take my permit test. And the absolute hilarious thing is that the information desk lady accepted my documents and she even asked this other lady next to her and she approved them as well. Please dmv, do not waste people’s precious time. It’s not like the only stuff on my to-do list are going to dmv and watching netflix. I’m really just asking you to be more efficient and...