Column: I hoped the DMV’s eLearning license renewal would be a snap. It wasn’t

For months, my advice to anyone renewing a California driver’s license has been direct and unwavering:

Do not go to a DMV field office and struggle with the written tests, which have been littered with confusing and irrelevant questions. Do go online, instead, and from the comfort of your own home, take the “NO FAIL” eLearning course.

So, when I got my license renewal notice in the mail a few weeks ago, I knew just what to do.

Or so I thought.

I was hoping for an easy cruise around the block, like the dozens of readers who sent me their endorsements of eLearning.

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It’s “fantastic,” said Robert, a Studio City psychologist, who found eLearning “less stressful” than the traditional test because you’re at home and there are no “picky” or “vague” questions. He completed the course, which is more of a driver-ed rules-of-the-road refresher than a test, and finished up with the required trip to a field office for a photo and an eye exam.

But others wrote to me in frustration, saying they couldn’t figure out how to access eLearning, or that it hiccuped and froze, or that they went to DMV offices to complete the process and were told there was no record of them having taken the course.

Now it was time for me to roll the dice.

I turned on my computer, went to DMV.CA.GOV and easily navigated to a tab for “standard driver’s license ID” and “REAL ID driver’s license/ID.” I already had REAL ID, so I proceeded on a path to a standard renewal and was prompted to set up a DMV account (which was swell because who isn’t dying to memorize another username and password?). That took several minutes, and then I bumped up against the first of several glitches.

A yellow caution sign informed me: “You are not eligible for online renewal right now.”

But directly beneath that warning was this:

“To save time, start the process to renew online and finish your renewal at a DMV office.”

So what was it going to be? Was I eligible? Ineligible? Had I entered the DMV twilight zone?

I clicked on the “to save time” line and eventually landed at the Virtual Test Center, so apparently I wasn’t ineligible after all. There, I was given a choice of eLearning or the “Online Knowledge Test,” a digital version of the regular written test, which I knew to avoid.

In California, if you’re 70 or older, you’re required to take a test to renew your license — every five years.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

I chose eLearning and proceeded to the payment page, where I was instructed to hand over the $45 renewal fee. But after I put it on my credit card, I was abandoned, like someone who was dumped out of a car on the side of the road. There was no way to click forward or click back.

A well-designed program would have made the next step crystal clear. Instead, I was closed out of the application system. I checked texts and emails, but couldn’t find any confirmation of my $45 payment. I went back into my DMV account, but couldn’t figure out how to pick up where I had left off.

Had I made a mistake? Had the system crashed?

I decided to repeat the whole process, and paid another $45, assuming my first payment had never been processed. And as soon as I did, I was closed out again, just like before.

I looked back through emails from readers who’d had similar problems. I scanned the DMV website for any clues as to what had gone wrong. And then I saw that I’d just been sent two emails from the DMV saying the agency had received my two applications for REAL-ID, with two identical sets of instructions to visit a DMV office and produce proof of citizenship and residency.

There was no mention of eLearning.

It’s worth noting that DMV director Steve Gordon was a tech executive who left Silicon Valley five years ago on a mission to reform and modernize the notoriously backward, user-unfriendly agency. He wanted to make it easier for customers to conduct business from home rather than having to grow old standing in line at field offices.

The E in eLearning, he once told me, stands for “enjoyment.”

I was beginning to wonder when the enjoyment would begin. I was now $90 in the hole with nothing to show for it. So I called DMV spokesperson Anita Gore to tell her about the glitches, and while we were chatting, I got an email that caught my attention.

“Please stop telling us the DMV online services work,” said La Crescenta resident Mary Mirch, whose timing was perfect.

Mirch, a retired college administrator, said she was applying for a license renewal and trying to get to the eLearning course, but instead received confirmation of an application for REAL-ID.

But, like me, she hadn’t applied for REAL-ID.

DMV director Steve Gordon was a tech executive who left Silicon Valley five years ago on a mission to reform and modernize the agency.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

I thanked her for proving that I wasn’t a dummy.

Like me, Mirch repeated the entire process, got the same result the second time around, and was in a DMV online holding pattern for 45 minutes, waiting for help.

“What a mess,” she said.

More than an hour after my troubles began, the first sign of hope arrived by email. The DMV sent me a link to the eLearning course. Mirch said she eventually got a link, too, about two hours after she applied.

Several questions came to mind:

Why weren’t we told, after payment, to look for an emailed link to eLearning in a couple of hours?

Why did we have to wait for an email link at all, rather than going straight from payment to eLearning?

And why did we get instructions to complete REAL-ID applications?

Mirch and I agreed the system is unnecessarily clunky and confusing, or at least it was on the day we tried to use it. The DMV recommends eLearning, which began two years ago, so why not drop other options? It would also help to clean up all the confusing clutter on the web pages and have a tab that says, simply, “If you’re 70 and older and want to use the eLearning course to renew your driver’s license, click here.”

Estela Lopez, executive director of the L.A. Downtown Industrial District, told me she’s pretty tech savvy but had roughly the same experience Mirch and I had.

“It makes you feel dumb, and that’s what I don’t want seniors to feel,” Lopez said. She was under the impression, thanks to the REAL-ID snafu, that she was supposed to take her passport and utility bills to the DMV office when it was time for her photo and eye exam. So she did as instructed, only to be told she didn’t need any of that.

“I just want them to understand that no, we’re not clicking on the wrong tab, we’re not pressing the wrong button,” Lopez said. “They’re not putting enough marketing and love into this. If they were, it wouldn’t be this confusing.”

There’s one more thing that Mary Mirch, Estela Lopez and I have in common.

We all thought the eLearning course was pretty good, when we finally got to it.

It’s a vast improvement over the traditional multiple choice test. You can start and stop the video, working at your own pace, with seven animated mini-courses offering refreshers on the rules of the road and safe navigation. One section was a bit like a video game in which you have to click on a parked vehicle and safely drag it into the correct lane of traffic on a busy road.

At the end of each section, you get a short quiz with three possible answers, and if you guess wrong, you can guess again. No trick questions. No dumb questions. No need to study a handbook before starting.

I was done in about 45 minutes, and my visit to the Glendale DMV office for a new photo and an eye exam was a snap. Office managers Wanda Jackson and Patty Carranza were working the windows with good cheer and actually telling clients it was a pleasure to serve them. Having made an appointment ahead of time helped get me past long lines, and I was in and out in 30 minutes.

So I think there have been improvements in the DMV culture under Gordon’s reign, and if you need to renew your license after 70, eLearning is indeed the way to go. The problem is getting there.

I forwarded emails from several exasperated readers to the DMV, along with no-brainer fixes suggested by Mirch. Gore told me the DMV appreciates the feedback and is working on improvements, including a fix of the REAL ID glitch and “making our website language more clear.”

OK, I’ll keep an eye on that. But in the state that’s home to Silicon Valley, at a public agency run by a former tech executive, it shouldn’t take this long to get it right.

steve.lopez@latimes.com