Failed French car registration software causes fury and court cases
Failed French car registration software causes fury and court cases
If you’re about to emigrate to France and are planning on treating yourself to a new car once you’ve arrived, perhaps you should hold back for a while. French citizens and expats alike are caught up in a huge logjam caused by the failure of the online registration process. An amazing 450,000 car registration documents are trapped at the processing stage, with an increasing number of frustrated motorists taking legal action against the state for putting their driving lives on hold.
According to the authorities, the size of the demand for online car registrations was underestimated, causing the website to struggle and finally give up. The new facility went online last November and is now leaving new cars sitting in garages or on hard standing with their proud owners getting angrier by the day.
Surprisingly, some drivers who’ve gone to court are actually receiving compensation, with one awarded €400 and the promise his registration would be completed post haste. Sure enough, 10 days later his ‘carte gris’ arrived. Another motorist from Toulon was awarded €1,000 for the inconvenience of not being able to drive his new car.
Apparently, the new online system has been bug-ridden from square one, starting with a display page stating ‘service unavailable’ at crucial points in the registration process. It’s also unable to cope with female drivers who’ve changed their names when they got married. As with most world countries, the law dictates unregistered cars cannot use French roads, and dealers can’t hand them over to their paid-up new owners until the process has been completed.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, most files in the backlog are now marked
incomplete, but the service should be up and running by early summer. New vehicles sold by dealers will now have temporary plates valid for four months whilst techies sort out the software.
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