Car registration and licence renewal - sticky business.

Why is it so hard to remove the old registration sticker from the windscreen? My old one was peeling off on one side and tricked me into thinking it would be a piece of cake to remove it.  Boy, was I wrong! How can it be that one half of something just peels itself off and the other side requires a sand blaster and at least a week to remove?

Armed with my bottle of eucalyptus oil and a palette knife, I thought it would take a few minutes. Half an hour later, the windows were fogged and I was as high as a koala on eucalyptus. It seemed little progress had been made, but there was a carpet of tiny, sticky shavings of the old blue registration sticker all over the front seat.

At last I felt that enough had been removed to allow me to apply the new sticker. I pressed very lightly, hoping that this time next year, the removal process would be quick and easy. I have this thought every year. Every year I am disappointed.

The digital age is yet to reach Vic Roads. Surely we should just have a permanent bar code or a chip or something, but we're still on old, cumbersome technology.

I was actually late with my payment and realised the same day that my driver's licence had also expired. It hadn't been a problem because I only drive occasionally and I had been away travelling interstate. I logged onto internet banking ready to make the payments. I looked at all the paperwork I had received and could find no information about how to pay electronically. I called the call centre and was invited to pay over the phone - a method requiring credit card with only Visa or Mastercard offered as options. I enquired about BPay and was advised that because I needed a photo for my licence that option wasn't offered. In relation to the car registration, I was not able to pay by BPay because the payment was overdue. I would need to go to a Vic Roads office.  I opted to pay by credit card.

When I asked the woman about the lack of flexible payment options, she reminded me that my payment was overdue. Eternal damnation for me!

I confirmed with her that now that I had written the receipt number she provided on the driver's licence renewal I should take that to a "photo point"...? This seemed to be what the booklet and the form suggested.

"NO! Because your payment is overdue, you need to wait for me to send a zero balance data card to you in the mail. You then take that to the photo point. They won't take your photo if your renewal notice is showing a balance."

"Okay. But if I had paid on time, over the phone, I would be able to go to a photo point and they would take my photo?"

"Yes."

"But the renewal would not be showing a zero balance...?"

"I've already explained that your payment is overdue. I've explained that to you."

It truly did feel that the minute the clock struck midnight Vic Roads was going to make the process unbearably difficult - perhaps to motivate me to be more organised in ten years' time when my licence expires!

In the meantime, my car smells like eucalyptus and the new sticker is threatening to curl its corners.