If you renewed your license a while ago and haven’t received your plastic license yet, there might be a reason.

At the Kapalama Hale City Hall, there are about 20 boxes filled with mail containing resident’s permanent licenses. They are sent back because the address is wrong.

“What we suspect is people or maybe using an old piece of mail thinking that it will be forwarded to their new address but because these are security documents they are not forward-able,” said Sheri Kajiwara, Director Department of Customer Service.

To deal with the issue, the city created a new hotline to help. People with temporary licenses about to expire can call the hotline and get help instead of having to walk in to the DMV. (The hotline number is listed at the bottom of this article.)

“In order to better meet needs, we felt that if we offered this hotline number to address this particular problem, people could call, leave their information and off hours we can research and get back to them,” said Kajiwara.

Another major issue that many people have is the wait time. For people trying to make an appointment today, the earliest available day is October 3rd. Eileen Crowley had to wait a month and a half for her appointment.

“It just should not take that long somehow or another they need to speed it up,” said Eileen Crowley, Hawaii Kai Resident. 

Kajiwara says part of the problem is that there is a 400% increase in driver license renewals this year. This August there are more than 12,000 people expected to renew their license. 

“We set up an appointment system that can handle 13,000 appointments still offer 7000 walk in transactions per month,” said Kajiwara. “We thought that would be enough but unfortunately because people have to come back again or they don’t know what documents they need and make a second visit, those add up.”  

The Aloha-Q website that went live in April is the only way to get an appointment. It is also available on kiosks at Pearlridge, Kapalama and Wahiawa.

The hotline number is (808) 768-9128. You can also visit their website here.