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South Dakota driver licensing shenanigans
Yesterday (Friday) I tried to get a driver license in South Dakota, having [I thought] fulfilled all of the requirements for doing so. I failed, due mostly to incompetence on the part of the South Dakota Department of Public Safety.
Thursday, I stopped in Sioux Falls SD to get my vehicle repaired, sign up for a mailbox and mail forwarding service, and run some errands. I visited the mailbox business in person. I met the owner, and he walked me through all of the paperwork required for my goals [or so he thought], including all of the relevant official SD DPS paperwork. While there, my USPS form 1583 was notarized by a notary in his building. He filled out a price form with my montly fee, signup fee, postage deposit, tax, total, etc, then signed it and marked it paid when I gave him the cash.
Thursday night we stopped at a campground near Salem SD.
Friday morning as we hit the road I called the DPS to find out which stations near our route were open on Friday. I was told that only one was, the one in Rapid City. Later I discovered that this was incorrect; we could easily have stopped in Winner SD much earlier in the day and avoided all of the problems described below. We could have back-tracked to Sioux Falls, but that would mean a two hour detour, and we could just make it to Rapid City in time, so we went for it.
We had to take just a quick peek, or skip entirely, the attractions in central SD that were on our trip (Badlands, Wall Drug, etc). Fast forward ~6 hours and we arrived at the Rapid City driver license station just in time for their start-of-application cutoff (4:30PM). Of course, reaching the station required following a maze of signs with arrows on them, some of which were missing, so that was a challenge at what we thought was the last minute.
This brings us to the most frustrating part of the experience. Once I got to speak to someone in the office, I discovered that they were unhappy with my documents establishing my mail forwarding service and residency exception. Specifically, the page with the amount I paid, signed by the person who received my money, was not a good enough receipt for them. The girl behind the counter literally said "anyone could have signed that", and was unphased at my response of "you could say that about any signed document". She wanted something computer-generated, on the letterhead of the mail forwarding service, a receipt and contract. She said that a different local forwarding service provides that, so mine should have, too. She did not care for my observation that many customers of the service I was using had previously used the paperwork that I was using. Due to the time zone change, 4:30PM in Rapid City is 5:30PM in Sioux Falls, which was just barely too late to get on the phone with the mail forwarding folks and have them send over a "better" receipt. I left them a voicemail and sent an email just in case they would receive them, but that was a vain hope.
At this point, I'd spoken to the manager of the office a couple of times, and I was dealing half with her, half with the other people behind the counter. I pulled out my Residency Affidavit form, from the SD DPS' website. I'd filled it out and signed it. It specifically states that the form (itself) and a campground receipt meet the requirements for an exception to the residency proof requirements. The DPS office manager was having none of that. She pulled out a different residency affidavit form from their shelf of forms which listed the added requirement of a piece of mail or a receipt from the forwarding service (see above for them rejecting my receipt). I demonstrated to them, by walking the girl behind the counter through reaching it on her computer, that the form I was using was on the DPS website. The manager said that since her form was also on the website, I had to follow it, and she didn't care what the other form said. She suggested that my form may be outdated [which I later learned to be true].
Conveniently, also due to the time change, her superiors in Pierre SD were also gone for the day, making her the final arbiter of all things driver license in Rapid City until Monday. I left, defeated. I'll try for a driver license in Florida or Georgia when I'm down there, or in South Dakota again the next time I drive across the country.
Old affidavit form: http://dps.sd.gov/licensing/driver_licensing/documents/RESIDENCYAFFIDAVIT_000.pdf
New affidavit form: http://dps.sd.gov/licensing/driver_licensing/documents/RESIDENCYAFFIDAVIT_001.pdf
Thursday, I stopped in Sioux Falls SD to get my vehicle repaired, sign up for a mailbox and mail forwarding service, and run some errands. I visited the mailbox business in person. I met the owner, and he walked me through all of the paperwork required for my goals [or so he thought], including all of the relevant official SD DPS paperwork. While there, my USPS form 1583 was notarized by a notary in his building. He filled out a price form with my montly fee, signup fee, postage deposit, tax, total, etc, then signed it and marked it paid when I gave him the cash.
Thursday night we stopped at a campground near Salem SD.
Friday morning as we hit the road I called the DPS to find out which stations near our route were open on Friday. I was told that only one was, the one in Rapid City. Later I discovered that this was incorrect; we could easily have stopped in Winner SD much earlier in the day and avoided all of the problems described below. We could have back-tracked to Sioux Falls, but that would mean a two hour detour, and we could just make it to Rapid City in time, so we went for it.
We had to take just a quick peek, or skip entirely, the attractions in central SD that were on our trip (Badlands, Wall Drug, etc). Fast forward ~6 hours and we arrived at the Rapid City driver license station just in time for their start-of-application cutoff (4:30PM). Of course, reaching the station required following a maze of signs with arrows on them, some of which were missing, so that was a challenge at what we thought was the last minute.
This brings us to the most frustrating part of the experience. Once I got to speak to someone in the office, I discovered that they were unhappy with my documents establishing my mail forwarding service and residency exception. Specifically, the page with the amount I paid, signed by the person who received my money, was not a good enough receipt for them. The girl behind the counter literally said "anyone could have signed that", and was unphased at my response of "you could say that about any signed document". She wanted something computer-generated, on the letterhead of the mail forwarding service, a receipt and contract. She said that a different local forwarding service provides that, so mine should have, too. She did not care for my observation that many customers of the service I was using had previously used the paperwork that I was using. Due to the time zone change, 4:30PM in Rapid City is 5:30PM in Sioux Falls, which was just barely too late to get on the phone with the mail forwarding folks and have them send over a "better" receipt. I left them a voicemail and sent an email just in case they would receive them, but that was a vain hope.
At this point, I'd spoken to the manager of the office a couple of times, and I was dealing half with her, half with the other people behind the counter. I pulled out my Residency Affidavit form, from the SD DPS' website. I'd filled it out and signed it. It specifically states that the form (itself) and a campground receipt meet the requirements for an exception to the residency proof requirements. The DPS office manager was having none of that. She pulled out a different residency affidavit form from their shelf of forms which listed the added requirement of a piece of mail or a receipt from the forwarding service (see above for them rejecting my receipt). I demonstrated to them, by walking the girl behind the counter through reaching it on her computer, that the form I was using was on the DPS website. The manager said that since her form was also on the website, I had to follow it, and she didn't care what the other form said. She suggested that my form may be outdated [which I later learned to be true].
Conveniently, also due to the time change, her superiors in Pierre SD were also gone for the day, making her the final arbiter of all things driver license in Rapid City until Monday. I left, defeated. I'll try for a driver license in Florida or Georgia when I'm down there, or in South Dakota again the next time I drive across the country.
Old affidavit form: http://dps.sd.gov/licensing/driver_licensing/documents/RESIDENCYAFFIDAVIT_000.pdf
New affidavit form: http://dps.sd.gov/licensing/driver_licensing/documents/RESIDENCYAFFIDAVIT_001.pdf
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