Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Car Chat => Topic started by: OOMV6 on 01 March 2012, 18:16:49
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I read with interest the comments for / against centralising DVLA, the stories on logbooks, MOTs, taxing a car at post office etc. and general admin stuff for cars.
Things are different in different countries, naturally.
My many experiences over the past 15 years or so have been have been with Luxembourg and Germany, both with what I consider good points and some not so good.
In Luxembourg, there are a 3 centralised testing stations (it’s only a small country). Basically you get an appointment sent (no need to remember when test due), go there, queue up with lots of other people and drive through a long hall, which has 5 lines of traffic going through, staying in the car for most of the time.
Also all the paperwork for change of ownership / change of addresses etc is done there, which is a bonus as every time you buy a car this test needs to be conducted regardless of when it was last done. If it was within the last couple of weeks or so, they generally take just a cursory glance over it. Not sure how trade deal with this – maybe different rules – but for the private buyer it actually can act as some sort of security. When buying a second hand car, you agree with the seller whatever the deal is, based on it passing the test. So you always get 12 months ticket.
When tested, each check has it’s own tester
Emissions checked first.
Then all lights, interior of car
Then drive over a pit for chassis / suspension etc. check
Then onto brakes – you get out for this and tester takes over
Then drive pass a “man in a cabin” to receive the news, good or bad.
Must be pretty boring for the checkers though. Imagine spending all day looking at lights on a car. They do have 15 minutes breaks though - some years ago I knew someone who was over the pit at that time with the front of the car jacked high up in the air. The bell rang for coffee break, and off they went leaving him with a view of the ceiling of hall for 15 minutes.
Luxembourg, being where it is, has plenty of imports. Having done this, it can be a bit of a headache on the paperwork, and they generally look at vehicles from certain countries with discontent. There is only one way to deal with it – stay patient, accept what they say and comply. It’s by far the best technique.
Germany has a slightly different approach. Their test is a lot tougher – needs to be - it’s only every 2 years with emissions being annually tested.
In common with Luxembourg, garages themselves cannot test the cars. You either go one of the dedicated stations – there’s loads of them. Or you book at your local garage and a tester from the “testing authorities” visits to test the car. Generally garages have certain days when the tester visits.
It is easy to keep track of when the test is due. It is on the rear number plate, as some of you may know – colour coded by year so easily identifiable by police. The other symbol being the symbol of the region / county the car is registered in. When buying a car, a bit like in UK (the test ticket stays with the car), it is not so great to get one that is approaching test time. It will have been nearly 2 years since a test.
Similar to Luxembourg, you go to one place to do all the paperwork, except tax. You queue up, present the paperwork, and if have bought from another town (http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/where/d.htm ) you will need new plates get a number allocated (the first part is dictated by the town / region, the rest you can choose if you wish - so lots of “personalised plates), then go next door to get plates printed on the spot, go back to get the stamps put on the plate. Done. If same region, one visit, no new plates and all done.
Tax is simple. Part of the paperwork is to give them your bank account number (normally by showing a debit card) Once you have registered a car, within a week or so the tax authority send you a notification and debit your account.
If you are one of those people who decide that testing or taxing a car is not for you, you will get a visit at your home and the stamp will be scraped from the plate. Or if the car is spotted by the police, they’ll do it. So even in your absence, your car is rendered useless to drive on the road as it won’t be long before it is spotted.
Trailers – another story ... maybe for another time. In UK, Belgium, Spain and some other countries, just stick a copy of the towing vehicles’ plate. In Lux / Germany they are vehicles in their own right, needing test, tax, insurance. Something I personally agree with, but when importing a trailer from Spain, which started its life in Belgium, this proved challenging. Maybe that story will go on another post!
So both counties have their ways, and once you get used to it, it really is quite simple – just a bit of waiting around.
Hope post wasn’t too long....
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Interesting read :y