Get your vehicle papers renewed online in Lagos

"Hello Hafiz, I'm not back to the office because I was arrested by VIO officials for driving around with an expired road-worthiness certificate. I am currently at the VIO office sorting things out". That was how the Whatsapp message from my colleague read. He sent it after he had been away from the office for almost three consecutive business hours. I felt great pity for him because of his plight but then, I was powerless to do any more than that. In local parlance, that would have been a right situation to say "the guy don enter am".

He later returned to the office over four hours after he left the office for what was supposed to be a short self-errand. You could definitely see it written all over him that he had had a terrible terrible day. Turns out he had to pay a fine of 20000 Naira for driving around without complete vehicle papers. On top of that, he had to pay the fee to get the expired paper - which was three months overdue - renewed. 

As soon as I was done empathising with him, I went on a mission to ensure I didn't end up in his shoes in a few months time when my own papers would be expiring. My vehicle was less than a year old at the time, so I had no experience whatsoever with these things. After discussing with him and another colleague and doing my research online, I arrived at the fact that the papers - for a private car - that need to be renewed on an annual basis are as follows:

• third-party insurance policy
• road-worthiness certificate
• vehicle licence

From the discussions that I had with my colleagues, the process to get all three papers renewed did not seem straightforward at all. In the end, I arrived at the following pieces of information:

• I could buy the insurance policy off of the website of a couple of Nigerian companies
• I could get the vehicle licence renewed at any branch of any commercial bank in Lagos
• I had to visit the FRSC office to get my road-worthiness certificate renewed

That last point was one that did not really sit well with me. No way I was up for going through that sort of trouble. So, I resolved to do some more research to see if there was someone offering a holistic renewal service online. Luckily enough, there was! It did not take me more than a minute of Googling to dig up Regexpress.

I opened up the link and right on the home page was evidence that they had just what I was looking for. A service that catered for the renewal of all three papers at a very affordable price of 10000 Naira - inclusive of delivery. I quickly proceeded to complete the order for the product. A couple of hours after that, I received a call from a representative of Regexpress to confirm my order. He said all that I would need to do is send him a screenshot of my expiring vehicle licence. Since my papers still had about three months of validity on them at the time, we mutually agreed that they would contact me in January 2017 to get a go-ahead to process the renewals on my behalf.

Yesterday, barely 4 days into 2017, I received a call from the same representative who spoke with me in the last quarter of 2016. Just as they had promised, this was a reminder about my soon to expire papers and to confirm if they could go ahead with the renewal process. Of course, I approved of it and shortly after, I sent a photograph of my vehicle licence to him via Whatsapp. As I could not find any reviews of their service online, I maintained a bit of scepticism as to their authenticity. So I asked if I could pay on delivery, and to my delight, the guy said "yes".

This afternoon, just 24 hours after I sent him the licence picture, I could not contain my joy when the guy appeared at my house gate with a brown envelope in hand. I approached him with a smile and went on to inspect the contents of the envelope as soon as I had confirmed his identity and exchanged pleasantries with him. Everything was in perfect order. In that moment, I knew that this was how seamless every business-customer transaction process should be. 

Right there, I transferred the payment to an account which he provided since I did not have enough cash at hand and there are no ATM machines close to my house. Shikena! I wish they had helped make photocopies of the papers though and I made sure to let him know this. He told me they would incorporate that detail into the package going forward.

Kudos to an awesome customer experience. Go check out their packages now at http://regexpress.com.ng.