If not now then when?

Online Driver Safety Courses, You Have Failed Me

I have a story that is still being played out. It's interesting, funny and pathetic. And it's about taking an online driver safety course. These are courses/classes you take when you receive some type of moving violation in your vehicle and you don't want the violation to go on your permanent record. You also might take a course like this to reduce your insurance premium.

When I moved to Texas nearly 3 years ago, Geico told me that if I took this defensive driving course I would receive a 20% reduction in my premium. 6 hours behind a computer taking an online course? No problem. They even had a recommended vendor for the course, so the process of notifying Geico that I completed the course would be automatic since the two were "linked up". Even better.

So in November 2005 I paid my money and signed up for a driver safety course.

And then I did nothing for a long time. You see, I'm a pretty lazy person when it comes to this types of things. Those things that "get in the way" of life.

A silly amount of time goes by, and then in March of 2008 I received a speeding ticket. Cited for 5 MPH over the limit. First moving violation in 14 years of driving. I start looking into the classes offered to keep the violation off your driving record, so my insurance rates don't go up, and I quickly figure out that the course I already paid for 2 years ago will apply to this ticket. Awesome I think, kill two birds with one stone.

Well, I pay my $110 to the City of Austin to allow me a 3 month period to complete the course, if I lapse in taking the course then I have to pay the difference on the ticket ($41) and then I supposedly get a point on my record and my insurance company will of course find out about it and my insurance rates will undoubtedly increase. My June 5th deadline comes a little quicker than I anticipated, so on June 6th (the 5th was a Sunday) I go to the downtown police headquarters, visit a walk-in judge who allows me a 3-week extension on my deadline. I needed that 3 weeks because to prove my completion of the program I needed a certificate, which can take up to 2 weeks to receive, they say.

This is where it gets interesting.

That night, as soon as I get home I sit myself down and start taking the course. At about midnight, 4 hours into this 6 hour course, their website crashes. It crashes hard. Not responding to pings or anything. I think they let their domain name registration slip, but who knows for sure. Luckily the next day I found out that you can stop the course at any time (they don't tell you this) and you can resume pretty much right where you left off. So the next night I finish the course and all is well. Until I get to the page that says "your certificate will be mailed to XXX" and realize that they have my old address (remember, I signed up over 2 years ago). So I call to straighten that out before the certificate is shipped (it was after hours any way), but the person I talk to has no record of me in their system. They tried everything.

Hang up, check the phone numbers and make sure this website is legit. Seems to be, so I call back and get a different person, this one still not finding my info in their system. They were, however, able to use my login credentials (I reluctantly provided them) and verify that I did indeed complete their course and that my certificate would be mailed soon. So this helpful person makes special note of my account (or lack thereof), takes down my new address and assures me that the certificate will be mailed out to the proper address.

In case you're wondering, yes I had the USPS forward all my mail to my new address, but that was over a year ago and they've long since stopped forwarded mail from the old address. So I knew that if the mail went out to my old address, it would be rejected and returned to sender. My situation did not afford me the extra time to facilitate all these round trips with my certificate.

A few days after this experience I left on an 8-day vacation, returning expecting to have a certificate at my house. It wasn't there. By this point I was getting close to the end of my 3-week extension and quite antsy about getting this damn certificate. That Monday I called the American Safety Council to ask about my certificate and found out that they had indeed mailed my certificate to the old address and they received the cert back, rejected. What was really interesting about this call was that they were able to find my records no problem (it was during business hours), something I initially attributed to a previous lack of records, so somebody created them for me. I assumed they pulled my records down from their WWW DB (it clearly existed since I could log in to the website). This turned out not to be the case.

At this point I started getting real pissed off, and insisted they send my certificate out immediately, using 1-day express at no charge to me. They keep insisting they cannot do it, so I ask to speak with a supervisor, I go on hold, she comes back and says they'll ship it 2-day express at no charge. OK, good. Now it was time to call the City of Austin Police and find out when my deadline was. As luck would have it, my deadline was June 25th, two days away and an evening when the APD was open until 10pm. Perfect. Life just works out sometimes, right? Well yes, but not quite yet.

When Wednesday evening rolls around and I'm sitting at home with no certificate I decide it's time to call my friends at American Safety Council again. Hmmm, they can't find my records. It's after hours once again and they assure me there's no "Justin Perkins" of Austin, TX in their system. So it appears they have a daytime customer service system and a nighttime one, which aren't necessarily using the same database. That's lovely. Since these after hours folks have proved their incompetence once already, I decide it's best that I hang up and call during the day. That's today, Thursday. One day after my deadline.

I call my friends again today and of course during business hours they have my records. They tell me that they didn't ship my certificate out (the one that they 2-day expressed to me at no charge because they plead guilty to incompetence with the previous certificate mailing process) because they didn't have my driver license number and couldn't send the certificate without it. Yes I was livid by this point, shocked and amazed that incompetence levels could be lowered further and further, far below my expectations.

My certificate will now be here on Monday, which is 5 days after my deadline. So tomorrow morning I'm heading back into APD to see a walk-in judge again and let them know what's going on, pleading for a meager 3-day extension. I hope they agree. After all this, it would be such a shame to have done all this work for naught.

If you do business with American Safety Council, don't expect much. If you take an online course vs. an in-classroom one, don't expect it to be more convenient. If you speed, you will face a punishment of some variety or the other.