French Driver's License Exchange - Completed

French Driver's License Exchange

2017 was the beginning of enormous turmoil for French bureaucrats. Not only was there a new government, aiming for changes, but Brexit became real. Suddenly, a lot of Brits who had lived in France for many years had to make sure they could stay! This meant getting French documents that hadn't been needed before - all of which went through their préfecture. Requests for nationality jumped. As that process became backed up, many also applied for residence cards. Brits also applied to exchange driver's licenses. What used to take weeks, turned into a wait of months, and even years at some préfectures.

One of the government changes was to move all decisions about driver's licenses from the individual préfectures to a single location (Nantes). The préfectures would still collect the dossiers, but then simply pass them on to Nantes. Where they sat in an ever-growing pile until someone got to them.

Meanwhile, people who submitted a request to exchange their American driver's license in the middle of all this (people like me 🙄), weren't aware of the changes and delays until these things affected their exchanges...

I had posted my exchange experience in bits and pieces - usually, I asked about the status whenever I was at the préfecture (mine is Montpellier) for something else (like the status of my carte de séjour). This post (attempts to) pull all that together, along with links to the mixed posts where you can find more detail.

My driver's license exchange timeline:

1. End of January 2017 - arrived in France
2. April 2017 - OFII appointement and Sticker in my passport
3. August 2017 - attempted to get an appointment for submitting my dossier. I should have submitted it as soon as I had my OFII sticker in my passport, but I had read an article that incorrectly said I had to wait 6 months after arrival. As many rules as the French administration has, not all of them are in writing.
4. Late October 2017 - submitted dossier and got my first récépissé. The récépissé allows me to drive in France, but nowhere else. (http://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2017/10/french-drivers-license.html)
5. March 2018 - my first récépissé had expired, so I went to my préfecture to request a second récépissé (http://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-prefecture-drivers-license-and.html). Later that month, I went back in to pick it up (http://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2018/03/contacting-officials.html and http://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2018/03/traveling-on-national-strike-day.html)
6. July 2018 - my second récépissé is about to expire, so I went to the préfecture for another one (hah!). This is when I found out that 2 is the limit for the préfecture. My legal permission to drive, even in France now, is in limbo. A phone call to Nantes, followed by a letter, got my dossier off the pile (http://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-prefecture-drivers-license-and.html)
7. Late July 2018 - I got an email asking for the exact date that I had received my first license; you can bet I responded very quickly!
8. Early August 2018 - I got another email, saying my request was approved, and they were making the card - it would be mailed to me, signature required. Well, that's very nice, but I was going to be away! And you only get 15 days to pick up a registered letter before it's returned! Fortunately (really?!?), it took a long time to fabricate the card, so it was only waiting a couple of days.
9. August 2018 - unable to rent a car in the USA. Drove several family cars using a photocopy of my USA driver's license; I had an explanation all worked out, just in case. And I was vewy vewy caewful!
10. September 2018 - back in France, I had a rental car arranged; I hoped to be able to drive, but wasn't 100% sure my license would be ready. Fortunately, it was waiting for me at the post office (signature required), and I picked it up on the way to the car rental agency.

This was probably the most frustrating of all the French administrative tasks I've had. I couldn't face even posting about the license finally arriving until months later. From what I've seen of more recent experiences (6 months beginning to end), the timeline seems to have gotten better. I hit the process at exactly the wrong time; it looks like the wait is on the downhill side of the big hump. I'm sure it is still a task filled with anxiety.

In summary, I started the process in August of 2017, and finally got my license in September of 2018.