Vic Roads v JPJ

It was a “stinking hot” day last Sunday – the temperature reached 42 degrees. The previous day was almost as hot, made worse by the fact that we spent much of the day outdoors. We looked at a couple of houses in Chadstone. One was a beauty, but the backyard garden was a bit intimidating. Theresa and I both thought it was quite beyond us to maintain an Eden like this. The other was much newer but one which had rapidly descended into deepest darkest Hades, no thanks to a bunch of monkeys for tenants. The moment we walked in we could smell the previous night’s cooking. The tenants were Indians, or from elsewhere in the sub-continent, as the rolling pin, wheat flour and trays for serving the chapattis were all over the kitchen. The giveaway really was the fact that these monkeys (or pigs) were actually sleeping in their rooms as prospective buyers were walking in and out of the property! The whole house reeked, had grimy floors and walls and was pretty much a pig sty. All in all, it was another futile day’s of house hunting so we returned home to cool off.

Around 2.30pm Theresa and I headed out again, this time to a car dealership. We had talked about trading in her 5-year old Holden Vectra. She had driven her mom’s brand new Camry while holidaying in Malaysia so our minds were more or less made up. After some haggling, we signed on and the Camry should be the new family car soon.

This morning I rang Vic Roads about getting a special plate for the Camry. In Malaysia that would have required paying illegal money a few persons or asking the dealership or the salesman to “take care of things”, just to avoid getting the dreaded “4” or “5”. I had called the salesman here to arrange for our special plate, but he said to call Vic Roads directly! I did, and I wasn’t asked to “come in and see someone”. Neither was the call passed around. After following some automated prompts, the first human being I eventually spoke with gave me all the information I needed. The costs were exactly as I had read about on their website and all she had to do was to confirm the availability of the number we wanted. The special number was reserved, paid for and transaction “kow-timmed” within 5 minutes. The plates would be mailed to our address in about a week. When they arrived, all I had to do was call Vic Roads again to tell them I have received them and fitted them onto the new car, at which point they would assign the special plate to our car, retire the original number and life goes on.

I wouldn’t care to recall what I would have had to do with the JPJ in Malaysia to get the same things done.

Melburnians complain about Vic Roads more than Malaysians do about JPJ. Really. That shows how much nonsense and incompetence Melburnians tolerate. In my dealings with them so far, I have had next to nothing to complain about. I think an advantage of growing up in Malaysia is we put up with so much crappy service from public bodies that we feel Christmas has come early when we suddenly deal with regulators or public bodies who don’t dish out such rubbish. Vic Roads may not be a popular body here in Melbourne but they are okay in the books of someone brought up on JPJ.

I hope I wont have cause to complain about Vic Roads, and that I will always remember the rubbish I received from JPJ, just so that I will appreciate the contrasts when dealing with Vic Roads.