New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission — Attraction in Lodi

I visited the Lodi DMV today and hope sharing my experience can help others make an informed decision and understand the process. First and foremost.... it will be an all day affair. It took me 9.5 hrs to get a driver's license. I arrived at 7am in the morning. At that time there was already a line wrapped around the entire building and another line wrapping around the parking lot. I joined the line in the parking lot. Around 8 am the line started moving and we basically made a 2nd circle around the DMV building.

Around 930 am we reached the front of the building.... still in the 2nd wrapped around circle and were given tickets with a number on it. My number was 234. We stayed in the line and continued circling around the building and by 1130 am we reached the front of the building again. This time we turned in our tickets and were asked to give our phone numbers and that we would be sent a text message in 2 hrs to come back and that we were free to go till then. I received a text confirming I was checked in and my new number was 245. So... after waiting 4.5 hrs in line you are only checked in and told to come back.

I went and grabbed some lunch and eventhough I hadn't received a text yet returned to the DMV at 130 pm. At this time they were at #207. I did not receive a text to come back to the DMV until 3:35pm and at 3:40 they called my number. The woman at the door was clearly telling people if you weren't there when your number was called you lost your spot. Please keep this in mind as the text message only came in 5 minutes prior to my # being called. Had I not been in the area I would have lost my spot. Also they announced they would not get to anyone with a number past 260. They had handed out numbers into the 300s. 260 was only 15 people past me and these people had also been there for almost as long as I had been and I felt really bad that at 330 pm they found out they wouldn't get serviced. I heard the first people in line had arrived the night before and had camped out.

Once inside things were fairly quick. Within 5 mins my number was called for an ID check and then I had to wait to be called to get the drivers license. They closed at 430pm and I left the building around 4:27pm.

I would highly suggest bringing a foldable chair. Its a long time to be standing and my lower back was hurting from not being able to sit down. Bring water as it gets hot and the sun is beating down on you. Be prepared to do something to pass the time. I listened to music for the first 2 hrs and then chatted up the people in line around me. The only bathroom is a Porta potty in the parking lot.

I hope the above...

This is easily the worse managed agency you can imaged. I was there around 6:15 am, late compare to those come in at 4 am, after a whole day of waiting, we were dismissed. The line was cut off even we got our tickets for the license renewal.

How it was badly manage? We're there very early in the morning, there's already lots of people lining up to enter, but let me remind you the line up is not to enter! We all lined up to get a ticket for admission. That line was extremely long so getting that ticket take hours, it moved so slow and it's unknown why they cannot give tickets much quicker since they're not processing anything.

But the worse is that, that ticket only give you a chance to get another ticket (a text message ticket with a number) so that you can get in !!!??? So, you lined up under the sun for 3 hours for a bureaucratic reason. After that, if you finally, luckily get that second ticket, you were told to wait 3 more hours for your number being call. They will send you text message to remind you your turn is coming up. You can come back for it if you are not staying to wait.

So then 3 hours later, you're back to the line and wait for them to call you. There's another hour of waiting for that! The lucky ones finally gets in, but sadly they come out and said they reach their capacity today and tell the rest of us to leave, our number will not be useful and need to restart tomorrow! Ironically, we still get the text message to tell us they're ready for us!

As you can see, the 2 tickets system is stupid as hell, even you do not have an online system to do appointments or registered people to come in, you can streamline this into 1 round, and you can give out tickets so people can just come back in a certain hour. Second, the second ticket was given out in a certain number only, so they already know how many people they will process today, if they give out the tickets already (the 2nd one), they should not be over capacity, it's under their control. So it's astonishing to learn that they cut off the group who was waiting with the info that they'll get in.

And also, on NJMVC's web site have a list showing which locations' reached their capacity, and Lodi was never full, they probably not even try to update the info so people think they're ok to go.

This is a badly managed MVC, not sure of the others, but poorly poorly managed. If this place can only process 100 cases per day, please just say so, you don't need to put up a line outside your building pretends there's a lots of work, they're just...

Really bad, was bullied by security and turned away by staff twice.

I needed to send my new license to a different mailing address that was it. I almost lost my motorcycle endorsement because of this and would have had to pay $400 and do the hours/test again. I was turned away because they said this was impossible? (until I found Juan because I was refusing to give up). I was treated with the absolute most disrespect from the Allied armed security guard Bruce. I was doing paperwork with a clerk and handed the clerk my phone that was logged into my baking app so he could confirm my info. I saw him start clicking around to which I asked him to stop, and he gave me such an attitude like "No I cant just take your word for it!!" I said, I'll give you different paperwork. Stop clicking around.

This is when Bruce walked over. He walked over to me and as he was looking at me, made a joke into the guys ear who was doing my paperwork. The both laughed at me. Bruce, the armed security, came over and made a joke about either my appearance or my bank account as he leaned over and also looked at my phone as well. I actually said, "Did you just make a joke about me?" to which he replied confident and with his chest "I sure did!!" as he rested his hands on his armed duty belt. A government contractor, as well as government employees, cannot bully and mistreat the public. I believe I was refused twice and mistreated by multiple is employees is because they can, there is no competition for the DMV. We HAVE to get paperwork there. They can refuse us, brow beat us with nasty faces, berate us, all because there is no oversight and we have no other choice but to tolerate it if we want to get our paperwork.

I wrote a very detailed complaint to Allied and did not hear back at all. I should have filed a complaint to the DMV. That made me uncomfortable and was totally uncalled for.

The ONLY person who was kind, and actually knew what they were doing was Juan. If he was not present, I would have spent 2 hours there being brow beat, berated, and bullied by both employees of the DMV and Allied Security with getting...