Renewing License Plates in Missouri
I can't stand it when things are harder than they need to be. Many times, things are hard because someone stupid is making the decisions, or someone lazy is doing the implementation.
My plates are up for renewal. I always wait until the last minute to do these types of things.
Fortunately, Missouri offers a neat little online system for accomplishing this. No waiting in line! Unfortunately, it would appear that an early design meeting included a bit of dialog like this:
"Do we want to let people use the system if their plates have expired?"
"Hell no! Screw them!"
"Yeah! Down with the citizens! Make it harder for them to renew!"
So if you're late getting your plates renewed, not only do you have to pay a penalty, but they rob you of the convenience of getting them renewed online (arguably much more of a penalty than the late fee). Why???
Of course, some would say it's my own fault for not renewing them on time. It's true that I didn't renew them on time. But what exactly is the point of this policy? Is it indeed some form of additional punishment? Why punish people by making it harder for them to get into compliance? Doesn't that just discourage people from doing the right thing? "Well I was all ready to renew online, but now I have to drive to an office, so I'm just going to put it off until I get a ticket..."
My little rant doesn't end here, though. Here's the list of documents that you're required to have to renew your plates:
- Renewal application
- Paid personal property tax receipts for the previous two (2) years
- Safety inspection
- Emissions inspection
- Proof of insurance
Each of these items is verified by the system as you enter them in.
Think about that for a second. The system already knows about most (if not all) of these documents. It would have to in order to verify that they're valid. So why do I have to go through the house and scrounge up all of the paper copies to enter them into the system? Why can't I just enter my license plate number, or my name and address, and have the system just pull up and verify that I'm all in compliance and ready to go? There's no reason why renewing plates can't be a simple matter of sending them the fee (electronically! even if it's past due!). Why make people do extra work?
Frequently, if this were a deliberate choice, the reason would boil down to costs. "Adding this feature might save everyone 5 minutes of time, but it costs $50,000! It's not cost-effective." There is an error in this logic. I see this a lot at work, but frequently the time/money saved is a little less obvious. Let's do some math. If this feature were used by even, say, 100,000 people, we're talking about 500,000 minutes of time, or 8333 man-hours. In a business, it might be standard practice to multiply this by $50 or $100 per hour of time. But since this is a municipality, let's value our citizens' time at $10 per hour instead. This hypothetical feature would thus save the public $83,333 a year. It makes sense, then, to implement it if it costs less than this. That $50,000 is cost-effective after all!