January 21, 2010

New email vehicle renewal notices will save time and money

OLYMPIA — The Department of Licensing (DOL) is offering vehicle owners the opportunity to save themselves time and help save money and the environment by signing up for email vehicle renewal notices.

Email renewal notices provide all of the information on a traditional paper renewal notice plus a direct link to DOL’s online vehicle tab renewal system — a real time saver. Using the link to the online renewal system, vehicle owners can have new tabs ordered and on their way within minutes of receiving the notice.

“We hope people embrace email renewal notices and sign up quickly because they really are a win for everybody,” DOL Director Liz Luce said. “They streamline the tab renewals, save trees and save the state money at a time we need to find ways to cut back.”

Vehicle owners can sign up for email renewal notices through the agency’s website at www.dol.wa.gov, when renewing tabs online or at their neighborhood vehicle licensing office.

If just our customers who regularly use the Internet to renew their tabs sign up for email renewal, DOL would avoid printing 1 million notices over the next year. This would save:

• 2,000 reams of paper and 2 million envelopes — or approximately 150 trees.
• Approximately $500,000 in printing and mailing costs.

“More and more people are embracing the Internet as a way to receive and pay their household bills,” Luce said. “Because we have almost 7 million vehicles in our state, the environmental benefits and cost savings could potentially be much larger.”

As with paper renewal notices, vehicle owners signing up for the new service will receive their email renewal notice about a month before their tabs expire.

There also are safeguards in place to make sure everyone gets a renewal notice. If repeated attempts to send an email renewal notice fail, DOL will assume the email account has been closed and will send a traditional notice. This should prevent problems for individuals who change email providers but forget to update their record with us.