myNCDMV 4+

I think it’s a bit silly to have to pay for an app that completes a public service. It certainly costs more than $3 to provide my interaction with staff at the DMV, so why those savings can’t be used to pay for this app, I don’t know.

Setting aside that objection, I’ve taken away two stars because of the chatbot interface for this app. There’s no need for this! We’re well into the internet era—just show me my information, let me confirm it, and make it easy to pay. I go online for these tasks to avoid talking with a real person, not to have to imitate it!

I took away an additional star because of several bugs I encountered while renewing a registration. If I’m going to pay $3 every time I use this app, it should work better than this. For example, when I flipped over to copy my credit card number from a password manager app, then moved back to it to get additional information, MYNCDMV deleted all the information I had already input. After entering new card info, I was dumped back to a payment screen to confirm... but there was no way to verify how I was paying. Time to check for some bugs, friends...

I think the app can work but every time I try to use it for basic items like register my car or now registering to vote the app bugs out during the steps while you talk to the chat bot. Registering to vote takes a while to bring up a keyboard the first time. Enter license info. Click the ssn second and something takes over the entire screen in the app where you can’t type or see. And you can’t even go back to start over you have to close and open the app. Rebooted phone. Reinstalled app. It’s just always so clunky when it could just be pretty awesome.

I’m actually shocked on some of the reviews I saw. Unless they’ve done some updates to the app after the reviews. I have a company vehicle where the registration expired while it was in the shop waiting for parts. After I had my inspection done, I waited 24 hours, downloaded the app, clicked on vehicle registration and the entire automated system guided me through. I had to pay property tax and for the expired registration but again the automated system on the app guided me through the process. Took 3 minutes and I was done. Now anytime I need to do this again, the app already has my info saved so even less time to complete. Some are complaining about the $3 charge that they add to do the registration on the app. Honestly, by the time I drive to the tag office, DMV and wait in line forever, I think anyone would agree that it’s worth it.