Glitches with the new online service of Quebec’s automobile insurance board’s website, SAAQclic, is sending many people to in-person service centres, only to be turned away.
“The lady said, ‘The system is broken, cannot do anything for you. You might as well go home, come back next week,'” Alicia Spence told Global News.
Spence is trying to transfer a car in her name and after not being able to complete the transaction online, she visited two outlets of the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) only to remain unable to complete the process due to software computer problems with the SAAQ’s system.
“It’s extremely stressful and it’s causing me difficult nights because I feel like the car doesn’t belong to me even though I have it,” she said.
On the SAAQclic website, the SAAQ promotes it as “always ready,” when many find it’s always crashing.
“As soon as I logged in, it said I had 23 minutes to wait just so I could access the website and then when that 23 minutes was over, nothing happened,” Noe Roberston, who was waiting in line at a south shore SAAQ outlet, told Global News.
In an email to Global News, SAAQ spokesperson Gino Desrosiers writes, “We are in a break-in period and we are not immune to slowdowns or anomalies. Our tech teams are on the lookout to react quickly when these situations arise.”
But the lines outside many outlets will likely continue unabated until the SAAQ can resolve the problems.