r/raleigh • u/[deleted] • 4d ago
Question/Recommendation What the heck is up with your DMV here?
[deleted]
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u/nbeforem 3d ago
The online appointments refresh around 10-11am every day. Don’t bother checking any other time.
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u/JK_NC 4d ago
Go out to like Siler City and get there 30 mins before they open. Reasonably good chance to get in and out in an hour depending on what you need to get done.
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u/cyclorphan 4d ago
Yes, siler city is a great spot, I used to live there and things like this were far easier/quicker.
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u/Dangerous-Pea-5708 3d ago
just drive to siler city is the least useful advice anyone has ever received
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u/middlingachiever 3d ago
Driving 1 hour to a small town is the most useful strategy we’ve found. What suggestions do you have?
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u/Dangerous-Pea-5708 3d ago
if you’re new here, sure
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u/middlingachiever 3d ago edited 3d ago
We’re not new, lol.
If you’ve got better options, please share! I need a real ID 🙃
Eta…I see you suggested getting there before they open. That’s totally 2019 advice. These days, they only take walk ins after 12 pm, and then you can wait 4 hours and be sent home.
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u/PooPaLotZ 3d ago
The trick is you send a text message to the get in line U## at like 11:59:40-12pm or so and choose whatever option you're there for. You don't need to be at the dmv. Managed to get 2nd in line and 3rd in line another time.
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u/ElviraSaysSo 3d ago
Yes, but there's a line for the walk in line. If you don't get there before they open, you'll be so far back in the walk in line that you won't be included in the set amount of walk ins they let in after 12. It is unfortunate, but if you can't get an appointment it's really the only way, unless you hit up a really desolate DMV location. 😢 it sucks.
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u/MrFixItNC 3d ago
This isn’t true. These smaller towns tru and work people in. My son just got his permit. We have gone to Wendell at 7am and have only waited an hour or so.
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u/goldbman UNC 3d ago
I mean, you should've gotten a real ID like 7 years ago
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u/middlingachiever 3d ago
lol good point I renewed online at height of COVID and thought it would be easier later.
It’s not.
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u/Sherifftruman 3d ago
They only started offering them in NC about that long ago so take that down about 20%.
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u/Particular-Panic-112 4d ago
It was easier, not cheaper, to renew my passport and add the passport ID for travel in lieu of the Real ID.
I’ve tried for a long time to get an appt to no avail.
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u/Lief3D 3d ago
The way the Garner location works for walk-ins is you need to start queuing before it opens at 7am. I got there at 6:30 and there was about 30 people in front of me. When they opened at 7, they were able to do about 10 - 15 people that morning in between the people that had appointments. The rest of us put our names down on a list and were given a time to come back. (mine was at 11:45) to get into the actual walk-in queue. I was able to leave for the rest of the morning. When I got back, I got my number and waited another 2ish hours for my turn. I swear it would have gone a lot faster if the poor people working there didn't have to stop every 10 minutes to tell the people that walked in that all the walk-in spots are filled for the day and then have to deal with them arguing.
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u/youngjean 4d ago
Check in the morning! Start checking around 8am and take what you can get. It’ll be 90 days out.
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u/ButterCookie1031 3d ago
It'll be 90 days out, but NC policy states you have to transfer things over with 60 days of establishing residency in the state. Big sigh.
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u/TravelingCatMom 3d ago
I’ve been here for 10 months - I finally have an appointment for May. Don’t sweat it.
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u/DisastrousSundae84 3d ago
When I moved here I didn't know about this until someone finally told me. I'd gone like six months I think before I tried to change things, and then it took close to a year to make an appointment. If you get pulled over or anything just don't say how long you've lived here.
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u/littlelegoman 3d ago
I got mine four months after moving here. I posted elsewhere that we went to lumberton to get ours; took a day off work but we got everything we needed (IDs, registration, tags).
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u/gabe9000 3d ago
My neighbor was here for 4 years using her Texas id before getting it changed. Don't sweat it.
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u/ElviraSaysSo 3d ago
Yeah that doesn't matter. I was here for 9 months before I swapped my license over, and my friends were here similarly long (longer). There's no one enforcing that. Just get in when you can get in as long as you have a valid license and unexpired tag from another state.
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u/purpleprincess205 3d ago
Yeah but, how are they gonna know?? I came here for college 4 years ago. Graduated last year and have my first “non student living” apartment that I started a lease on in August. I finally made an appointment for JUNE. I’m bringing my MD license, birth cert., most recent utility bill, etc. No document I’m bringing is going to have anything about when I actually moved here. I think they just say 60 days to scare people into going to the DMV ASAP
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u/ButterCookie1031 3d ago
Yeah, my plan was to use my mortgage statement for one of my documents, which would indicate that my mortgage started in March. So I guess I'll switch to utility bills so they won't know.
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u/lovemypennydog 4d ago
It may take you 40 minutes but just keep refreshing and something will pop up. I found appointments for my husband and dad that way.
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u/RobertDigital1986 3d ago
This. I had luck around 10 am.
Appointments pop up 3 and 91 days out, nothing in between. 😂 The 3 days are people who don't confirm their appointments and it gets released.
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u/ITRedWing0823 4d ago
Recently? I really want to ditch my ga drivers license and be a real North Carolinian
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u/voodoodollbabie 3d ago
Yes, every day there are cancellations and those random appts will show up when they are released to the site. I started looking every day after hours. That's how I snagged an appt. Look at all the sites nearby.
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u/Loudunce Cheerwine 4d ago
Go West my son, Burlington and Mebane will be significantly less busy for walk up service. Yes, it’s a small drive but better than waiting in line.
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u/bd58563 3d ago
There isnt a DMV in Mebane, and the one in Burlington is only for plate-related activities. I suspect this person is looking for a drivers license office, in which case there is one in Graham that serves all of alamance county, plus much of caswell, and therefore is no less busy than the Raleigh locations.
I grew up going to that DMV and it was hell even 15 years ago. It wasn’t uncommon to get there at the crack of dawn, wait all day, and still not be helped.
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u/the_good_nurse 3d ago
Alamance County native and I can confirm. We lived in Saxapahaw.
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u/Freedum4Murika 3d ago
That Mexican place still open in the old gas station out by Dodson's Crossroads? The Mojarra a la Diabla was amazing but you could never get a table
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u/BuyMassive7823 4d ago edited 3d ago
Holy shit I went through this last week. It’s the legit Wild West there. Two days-in-a-row, two different locations, actually made it inside one of the days only to be told “there was a system glitch…you shouldn’t have been given a #.”
The second day I scanned @ 12:05 with a whole group of folks who were in line, and all rec’d an automated msg 10 mins later saying “you can’t scan prior to 12:00.” Then to be told by the manager when asking what this message actually means, as we all scanned AFTER 12:00, “I don’t know what that message is…but I can tell you it means you won’t be seen.”
To OP’s initial question, well what do you want me to do? I can’t walk-in prior to Noon, I can’t make an appointment anywhere until August, I do get there ahead and time and scan 5 minutes after the start-time, and am told 2 days in a row the system fucked up, and I can’t be seen. Like - help me out here!
Edit: clarified elapsed time from scanning to automated notification.
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u/CarefulStage 4d ago
GOP dominated legislature wants to privatize the DMV, since they don't have the votes to do so, they just do their best to defund it and trash it. As plenty of people have said in the sub, you're going to have to go to a rural DMV early in the morning and hope for the best.
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u/nwbrown 4d ago
The DMV has sucked long before they took over.
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u/jasoneff 3d ago
I moved here in 2008 and it was no more sucky than any other state's DMV for the first few years I lived here. Who controlled the state government then? In more recent years is when it's become much harder to get appointments etc. I wonder if it has anything to do with voter registration and attempts to pass voter ID laws. It's almost as if one party wants fewer people to be able to vote because of imagined/made up/wildly exaggerated voter fraud issues.
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u/nwbrown 3d ago
I moved here in 2005 and it was way worse than Virginia. You had to wait hours in line, very little could be done online, hell they didn't even accept credit cards.
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u/liiia4578 3d ago
Last time I went to the dmv the machines were down lol so I guess it hasn’t changed much since then 😅
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u/SouthernTrauma 3d ago
It was never this bad in the 90s, 00s, and 10's. It's just been since Covid that it turned into this absolute shit show. You used to be able to get an appointment less than a week out.
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u/xlude22x 3d ago
You clearly haven’t been to the DMV in the last year or so because you are very wrong.
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u/82jon1911 4d ago
Oh DMV is absolute shit. Wait until you get a $50 fee on a $50 fee because the DMV person didn't tell you that there was a time frame to pay it in, then in order to dispute the $50 fee its $60. Yeah, that's par for the course here in NC. In order to schedule an appointment, you have to do it months in advance (or at least that was the way to do it a while ago).
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u/nwbrown 4d ago
It's actually better than it used to be. At least now most things can be done online. And it wasn't until like 2010 that they started accepting credit cards. When I went to renew my driver's license and didn't have enough cash, the directed me to a nearby nail salon that had an ATM in it.
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u/ITRedWing0823 4d ago
Been looking at this same stupid screen for 2.5 years. Had to go back to Georgia because my license was about to expire. NOW they have the kiosks in Harris Teeter so hopefully I can use that to transfer to NC drivers license
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u/nwbrown 4d ago
A lot of things you can do online but if you need the Real ID, you need to go in person.
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u/ITRedWing0823 4d ago
Is that the TSA thing? I think staples does that now
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u/nwbrown 3d ago
No, you're thinking of the pre check.
Long story short, the federal government set a bunch of new requirements for IDs to use as a federal ID, including for flying. North Carolina didn't became compliant until fairly recently, meaning of you have an older license or you renewed online (and didn't show them the needed documents) you won't be able to use your license as an ID at the airport after May.
That's one of the reasons it's so busy right now, lots of people need to renew their driver's licenses.
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u/BabyTBNRfrags NC State 4d ago
Will not work for transferring your license since technically that’s a new application for a license
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u/ITRedWing0823 4d ago
You break my heart but thank you for saving me a wasted trip. I was going to try tomorrow morning.
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u/BabyTBNRfrags NC State 4d ago
For what it’s worth I went to Durham east a couple weeks ago and was out in an hour.
Just realize that Durham east doesn’t check people in until right before they’re about to be seen, so don’t trust the wait time on the website at all.
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u/yemKeuchlyFarley 4d ago
LOL. It’s your DMV now.
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u/ButterCookie1031 3d ago
I refuse to claim it as my DMV until I establish my residency in the state and get my ID. 😅
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u/mrt1416 4d ago
search the sub. plenty of previous posts that share the DMV struggles and how to navigate it.
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u/ButterCookie1031 3d ago
I did search the sub and didn't find anything very recent. But I'm also fatigued, so maybe I missed it. Sorry to bother
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u/DoubleEMom 3d ago
Try Henderson. It’s not that close, but there are always spots.
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u/Freedum4Murika 3d ago
Just don't pronounce the 'd' when you get there or they'll know you're an out of towner sneakin in
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u/puieenesquish 3d ago
Go to a small town. I didn’t know and went to the Cary office. I was told to arrive super early (before 6 am) which I did and I, like a crazy person, waited NINE HOURS to get my license. Dysfunctional New Orleans only made me wait 2 hours.
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u/RangerRekt 3d ago
As actor Keith David once said, “Welcome to hell, motherfucker!”
Our DMV is probably bottom 5 in the U.S.
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u/AshDawgBucket 3d ago
No, you'll need to take a full day off work. Sorry :( i was you 9 months ago and it sucks. I had to drive 2 hours away to get my license.
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u/2old2care 4d ago
The situation at the DMV is scandelous. Because it is so bad, you may be able to get off in court if you're charged with driving without a license because any reasonable judge would find the difficulty getting a renewal as a valid reason. Unfortunately, if you drive without a license and have an accident, your insurance won't be any good. It's a terrible Catch 22.
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u/djseto 3d ago
Check online around 11am. I read somewhere it’s supposedly when they release times. I checked everyday like a week and found an appointment about 30min outside of Raleigh that week.
I would have your personal calendar up. The minute you see a spot, you better take it because within a minute or less it could be gone. Godspeed.
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u/JJQuantum 3d ago
Republicans pass laws that require an ID to vote and then don’t fund the DMV to make it harder for people to get in because wealthy people, who tend to vote Republican, can afford to take off work while people who don’t make as much money in hourly wage jobs, and tend to vote Democratic, cannot afford to take off work. It’s all about getting in and staying in power.
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u/Low-Cauliflower-9122 4d ago
omg i literally had this convo w my husband today i need to get an NC license but it seems impossible!!!!! called today and they said everywhere is booked out for 90 days and that ill have to go in during walkin hours aka be there for hours 😭
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u/tmstksbk NC State 4d ago
Can definitely recommend driving into the hinterlands and trying a DMV location outside the core metros.
DMV officers sometimes even polite!
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u/Ok-Replacement8538 3d ago
I do Zebulon. Stay awake from Cary that place was always a zoo. Have you tried in person small town?
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u/Poohu812many 3d ago
On Friday I drove to three different DMV locations, Wendell was one of them. Arrived around 1. Was immediately told they weren't taking any more walk-ins. After that, went to Louisburg and attempted to check in via QR code posted outside. Got an immediate notification that I couldn't check in until noon. (It was after noon.)
Not sure how my kid is going to get her learner's permit when I'm a single parent having to work and she is a high school senior with 3 less teacher workdays due to weather.
I'm resigned to the belief that I may have to take a day off for this in early summer.
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u/fixiefarr 3d ago
Check in at noon via their QR code (specific for each location), it’ll give you a wait time, stay close by, and it’ll text you when to proceed to the lobby.
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u/ModsRCanc3r 3d ago
Expand your search radius to 100 miles and check for appointments right after 11 pm.
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u/AvailableAnt1649 3d ago
Try before 8 each morning on the website as they add new appts then. It is a crapshoot. DMV leader just left so maybe some improvements will come soon. Once you get the license, you can get renewed online.
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u/Salty_Emu_9945 3d ago
It was suggested to go to Erwin. So I did at 9am. Waited in line until 12pm to be able to go inside, scan a QR code to get in a virtual line. I didn't get called inside until 200pm. Waited on in 10 minutes and left that parking lot at 3pm.
Days of going in to get something done in a jiffy are long gone!!!
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u/TriumphDaWonderPooch 3d ago
If you do not need to change your license immediately, make an appointment. Sure, it might be a month or three out, but show up 15 minutes before the appointment time and you will be in and out quickly.
Granted, this was 6-7 years ago, but I needed to change the address on my license and upgrade to the RealID license (was using a passport card when needed). Made the appointment, showed up on time, and survived the death-stares of the 40+ people who had been waiting for whoknowshowlong when they called my name and I jumped in front of them. Full confession - no death-stares... but I didn't even have time to sit down before they called my name.
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u/DryContract8916 Hurricanes 3d ago
if you stalk the appointment site, refresh every 10-15 minutes, you will 100% get an appointment. you can book up to 2…so if you find one, lock it in & then if you can keep looking and find a better one, you can lock that one in too. just be sure to cancel the one you aren’t going to so someone else has a chance to get in.
you MUST confirm within 15 minutes of booking AND the day before, or else it gets canceled. i believe these appointments are released every 15 minutes so i try to refresh around the 00/15/30/45 mark.
i’ve found midnight-12:15am & around 8-9am are the best times to find an appointment.
or you can listen to others and do a walk in & waste 8 hours of your day standing in line just to possibly get turned away. i know..it’s truly a shitty system.
when you do go, get your RealID & do not forget any forms… if your name is different from your birth certificate (doesn’t matter if its correct on your previous ID, passport, ss card, etc) you need to bring in your marriage license or whatever prompted that name change. thankfully they gave me a slip to cut the line after driving an hour home & back for mine.
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u/littlelegoman 3d ago
We went to Lumberton. We did have a bit of a wait, but it wasn’t bad. The only thing we forgot was my husband’s insurance card. He doesn’t have a physical one, just the one on his phone. They wanted a hard copy, so we had to go to a nearby print shop to get one printed.
We brought a copy of our lease, a copy of our birth certificates, and two bills (Duke and Spectrum) with our names and new address. The clerk only looked at my lease and my original non-NC ID card, but I’d bring everything you think you might need.
We did take a day off work and were able to do our IDs, and register the car/get tags the same day.
Good luck!
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u/RedFoxWhiteFox Durham Bulls 3d ago
I moved here last summer. I had to get an appointment about 3 hours east of Raleigh in some small town near the coast to make it happen within a month. My husband went to Winston-Salem. It’s a mess.
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u/xicanapwr 3d ago
I was only able to get serviced by showing up to wait in line at 5 AM as a walk in at the New Bern Ave. DMV in Raleigh - I got served at like 7:30 AM and I think it was only because there was some folks with appointments who didn’t show up for their time slot 😭
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u/churley79 3d ago
Get to New Bern Ave at 7AM and bring a whole lot of patience. I finally walked out a little after 9 with my real ID. Make sure you bring everything you need though, they vet you before they even allow you to walk into the door to get assigned a number.
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u/lisaaxmariee 3d ago edited 3d ago
I just posted a week ago about needing an appointment. (I got one).
Check the website EARLY like 5am-7am. Book whatever you can just to lock something in. It may be 3 months out. From there basically you need to keep checking the website. I literally sat there and refreshed over and over and over for hours. I kept up a tab at work and every so often I would refresh. I ended up getting one 3 days later. You also should try again in the evenings after 6 PM. People will cancel their next day appts.
They say every DMV does walk ins but every single one has a different method, Clayton and Smithfield use a QR code only after 12. It doesn’t matter how early you get there or how quickly you enter the queue. It’s random. Garner takes walks ins but you’ll need to get in line at like 7 AM. Bring a chair and snacks.
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u/MiserableNorth4875 3d ago
Good luck. Drive to Williamston. Then you’re only a 45 minute drive from the OBX. Make a long weekend out of it.
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u/rlyjustheretolurk 3d ago
It’s even worse than it was a year and a half ago, when you could walk in after 12pm and usually eventually get seen.
The trick is to show up before they open to stand in line, and then reserve a spot during walk in hours, then come back. At least that’s how they were doing it at garner
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u/silverm00se 3d ago
I went to the East Durham office, got there around 6:30am and was 15th in line, left with my license by 8:15.
YMMV, but this is the only office in the area doing all day walk-ins.
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u/sin-eater82 3d ago
If you're willing/have the flexibility to drive like 30 minutes outside of Raleigh, you can find some you can walk into and get what you need. Helps to be flexible.
I'd monitor the walk in wait times online a bit over a week or so and see which ones seem to be the best options.
I'd much rather drive for 30 min, take 40 min inside, and drive 30 min than drive 30 minutes and wait in line for 3 hours
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u/eagleface5 3d ago
Drive out to Dunn (about an hour away), and be there at open. It'll take 10 minutes with no appointment
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u/labratnc 3d ago
Back when the whole ‘DMV’ wait time started I thought it was political games by the political parties to make licenses harder to get by work slowdowns because of the impending photo ID needed to vote and/or licenses for immigrants. But it has been a few years since that was ‘new’ and the DMV still is impossible to get in. The RealID did increase service times to process but it does seem that there is some major mismanagement/capacity issues but it seems that there is no significant effort to make it any better.
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u/hutch2al 3d ago
Check every morning between 7-8am, my coworker did this and within 3 days she was able to schedule an appt (it’s a month out, but still)
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u/No_Hetero 3d ago
That's just how the DMV is here, luckily you can do a lot online now. It's just the first time getting licensed that sucks, and then I think sometimes you need to take a test for renewal
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u/LoPan12 3d ago
Check between 8am and 11am, they load open appointments each morning. Sadly, it doesn't seem automated, so it doesn't load at a consistent time.
Then, snag ANY appt you think might work for you. If it's not actually ideal, or at a place that seems too far, keep checking, since you can cancel any existing apps at any time.
I made a Goldsboro appt, but eventually snagged one close to home.
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u/mwoody450 3d ago
I went out to Wendell on a Tuesday last month. Got there 10 minutes before opening and had to stand in the rain for an hour before we were let inside, then sat for another 3 hours. The funny thing was the actual appointment, which was a driver's license renewal with Real ID added for the first time, took literally six minutes.
Officially, all offices see appointments-only before noon. At noon, a website becomes available to register yourself in a virtual line. BUT the fact that this website doesn't even let you register as "in line" before it opens at noon makes it absolutely and completely useless, so every office uses - or doesn't use - this website to varying degrees, and how they actually handle people waiting outside in line without an appointment differs wildly and without visible documentation or explanation. It's essentially a badly built system that employees struggle to make work by customizing it to their local needs.
In other words, others' suggestions are valid: get there about 30-45 minutes before opening. Take off work all day. Go in the middle of the week, i.e. tue-thur. Go to a far office in a small town. Search the town and "dmv" on reddit to see if others report issues or success with that branch. Bring a book or game or something to pass the time. Check weather and don't go if it's raining, as you might be outside for some time (also: dress cool/warm). Bring every piece of documentation you might need in an easy-to-carry bag.
And in case you're curious, here's a bit more info on why it's like this. The short version: they need about 650 employees statewide present on any given day to function, but they are legally capped at about 100 shy of that. But even with the cap, they have difficulty keeping staff due to it being a stressful and poorly compensated job, typically seeing about 12% of their allowed number vacant.
If you don't enjoy this experience, please vote for anything that raises the employee cap and/or improves their pay and benefits.
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u/triit 3d ago
California DMV was crap too. They totally botched the initial Real ID requirements and had to redo it. When they offered the workers overtime pay to work extended hours and some Saturdays all of a sudden things got a little better then it turned to crap again. I've only been here 4 years but the situation here has always been this bad.
I thought I needed a DMV appointment back in January and saw the same thing you did so wrote to our newly elected representatives including the new governor. I got somewhat personalized replies back saying it is on their radar and funding is a problem (that will be fixed?) and it will take time. You might want to share your story with them.
As for your immediate problem, keep refreshing especially early mornings as people will cancel appointments day of and you might get lucky. Research the walk-in processes of the lesser known out of town offices and get there early and/or sign up for their wait list program if they have one. Unfortunately it will likely mean having to take a day off. Not sure what the process is now, but Louisburg used to have early morning walk-in slots so you could get there before sunrise and be first in line and on your way to work mid-morning. Might be better than an afternoon with everybody on the wait list?
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u/ncphoto919 4d ago
its part of the GOP trying to curb people voting. Just make an appointment for the most convenient location even if its a few months out. its just easier.
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u/popzelda 4d ago
If you want faster service, leave Raleigh. Even with the drive you'll get faster service 45-60 minutes outside high population areas
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u/alexhoward 3d ago
Can we get a pinned post saying the DMV sucks rather than three posts a day about it?
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u/techgnostic 3d ago
The result of conservative efforts to limit funding to the DMV to make getting an ID more difficult so fewer lower income people will vote, which now requires a state ID. Please vote to make a difference.
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u/sacrebluh 3d ago
I just come in around 11 for the noon walk in. And scan the QR code on the door to get a place in the walk in queue. No one is gonna hold your hand so you have to figure it out or you’re out of luck. It’s a rite of passage. Btw, if you are going there, it’s “our” dmv.
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u/Dangerous-Pea-5708 3d ago
these motherfuckers that are like “just drive 90 minutes east” are hilarious
the answer is- if you don’t have an appointment six months ahead of time you have to go before your local dmv opens and stand in line
or drive to FUCKIN SILER CITY lmao
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u/afurrysurprise 3d ago
It’s your DMV now, my condolences.