DC DMV - Georgetown Service Center — Local services in Washington

The epitome of bureaucracy and incompetence. They LOST the out-of-state title to my vehicle. Lost it. How does that happen? How? I’ve visited the Georgetown location three times to try to get my vehicle registered.

First Appt (after waiting 7 MONTHS for an appt) - was told I needed to first to my vehicle inspected at a DC inspection location before it could be registered.

I went to get it inspected and was turned away and told that I had to have a DC registration first in order to my vehicle inspected.

WHAT?!?!?! I called and was told to just set up an appointment and come in to register my vehicle (and make sure my title was sent over). I worked with my lien holder and had them send my title over within 7 days (and received a confirmation letter in the mail by my lien holder indicating the title was sent).

Second Appt (after waiting another 2 months to even schedule it and 3 weeks for the appt) - was told that my title had not been received yet. I called my lien holder WHILE AT the DMV and had them explain to the DMV “customer service” rep that the title was sent nearly 3 months ago. Finally I asked to speak to a supervisor. I explained that my lien holder was on the phone on speaker. The supervisor looked at my cellphone on the counter as the lien holder was explaining the situation over speaker phone and the DMV supervisor HUNG UP MY CELLPHONE. (The audacity and unprofessionalism of doing this is remarkable). And then like a robot kept repeating herself saying that they can’t do anything without a title and that I needed to come back when they had received it. Fact check: it doesn’t take 3 months to receive a title in the mail.

After waiting another month, I was able to make another appt (and then had to wait another 5 weeks for the actual appt). I checked the out-of-state portal online everyday leading up to this appointment. Still no word that it was received by the DC DMV. I called and talked to someone who was actually pretty competent and re-assured me that they HAD IN FACT, 100% RECEIVED MY TITLE but they hadn’t logged it yet. She told me to go to my appointment and ask the customer rep at the counter to go to the mailroom of the DMV and look through the pre-log title folder if it still hadn’t been logged yet. This made sense! I felt better.

Third Appt - was told that the DMV still hadn’t received my title. I asked to talk to a supervisor. The same woman who hung up my phone with the lien holder came over and told me that my title wasn’t received it. I explained that the lady on the phone said to check the mailroom. The supervisor looked me dead in the eye and asked me “who at the DMV opened the mail with your title in it?” HOW ON EARTH WOULD I KNOW THAT?!?! She then told me that there isn’t a mail room. I tried to explain and she kept interrupting me by robotically repeating “sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, we do not have your title”. She wasn’t even trying to be helpful.

Let’s take stock: it has been ~5 months since my lien holder sent my title. I was assured by someone on the phone that my title was received and then told it wasn’t by the supervisor at the DMV.

Simply put, DC DMV lost my title and refuses to own up to it. I haven’t been able to register my vehicle and now on June 1st, DC is going to start ticketing again for expired registration. This is ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. Like actually UNBELIEVABLE.

As a result of this FIASCO, I’m leaving DC after moving here ~1 year ago. I’m moving to Virginia and never looking back. The DC DMV does not deserve another dime of my tax dollars. I refuse to support and fund any organization that is this infuriatingly...

“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”

Philosopher Hannah Arendt famously named subtitled her account of the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann "A Report on the Banality of Evil". Eichmann - though an architect of the Holocaust - was not outwardly monstrous in demeanor. He was not frothing at the mouth, ravenous in his hatred for the Jews. Far from it. He was an unremarkable man, a mediocrity, just following orders.

It is hard not to think of Eichman, and Arendt's famous phrase, after experiencing the DC DMV Georgetown Service Center. As you descend the long escalator leading to the mall basement where, beyond two corridors, the DMV is tucked away, you sense a foreboding. Something bad has happened here, and continues to happen, beyond the reach of God.

Here you are subjected to the worst and dullest inventions of man's imagination. Herded like cattle, you follow queue after queue, glacially moving towards what feels like could be a fate worse than death. To interact with staff at the the DC DMV Georgetown Service Center is to understand the overwhelming potential for man's inhumanity to man. Look into the eyes and you will see a bottomless disregard - eyes fiendish in their difference toward you. There is no thought occurring in these eyes.

I come away from such an experience thinking what has become of the country that fought and won in World War II - liberating Eichmann, Heydrich and Himmler's Death Camps? What happened to the country that could produce the Wright Brothers, and a mere 66 years later fly to the moon? In the tucked away basement, wrapped around two corridors, beyond the reach of God, it becomes clear that that country is dead - and it has been for some time.

For the DC DMV Georgetown Service Center is not an anomaly (there are many DMVs like it, some I'm sure are much worse even). But it is a Harbinger of the new world we have created. One of empty miserable activities, one where the average man has more tax forms than friends, of endless queues and of antiseptic indoor landscapes where you smell chemicals more often than grass. This is the evil new world we have created. Not by choice, but of sheer lack of thought. Eichmann would...

If I could give this place 0 stars, I would. I waited an hour, maybe more, before being called up. Yes, I am aware that a lot of people go to the DMV, hence the long wait time, but to wait for that long just to be treated so disrespectfully by the staff is outrageous. I had to go up with my father because both our names are on all the documents needed for certification, and when we explained that to her, she treated my father like an idiot, saying: "well you can't get registered at the same exact time, can you? So, who's going first?". We were harmlessly explaining to her the situation - that's it. In addition, she would vaguely ask us for the certification documents, my dad would pull them out, explaining what they were, and she would interrupt him to say "Nope. Can't use that."

I went in today, July 27, because I had to exchange my Maryland license for a DC one. But no, I couldn't do that because I brought my passport instead of my birth certificate. So, to whoever is living with their parent/parents, have their same last name, have joint documents with both your names on it, have your passport, and have your parent/parents present with you - THAT IS NOT ENOUGH! YOU NEED YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE! I am telling you this because the website does not specify this at all. If you're in this specific situation like I was and don't want to be treated like absolute garbage by the staff, then bring your birth certificate! Or better yet, avoid living in DC entirely just so you don't have to deal with the staff who are SUPPOSED to be working in...