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DFG NEW LICENSE SYSTEM PROS AND CONS – matthews-ONS – 28oct10
DFG’s new automated license system will cost agency money in lost sales
By JIM MATTHEWS, Outdoor News Service
All hunting and fishing licenses will be available for sale only through the Department of Fish and Game’s new automated license data system starting January 1, 2011. You can purchase fishing licenses on-line now through this system, and license vendors throughout the state be switching to the new system exclusively for next year.
You won’t have to fill out a new paper license each year or buy and paste on a handful of stamps. You’ll be able to swipe your driver’s license at a vendor and it will spit out a paper hunting or fishing license for you to use with all the stamps included. For bigger vendors, it will speed the sales process and ease bookkeeping chores.
But a lot of smaller vendors throughout the state are likely to simple quit selling licenses. It is estimated that as many as half of the 1,800 license vendors statewide will cease selling licenses.
“If Fish and Game goes 100 percent automated, there’s no way I could afford to put in the equipment and install high speed Internet to sell licenses,” said Sandra Lopez at Santa Margarita Lake on the Central Coast. Lopez said they sell a lot of one-day licenses to people who are impulse fishermen and get talked into going out with a friend on a picnic or to people who forget their annual licenses at home. Those sales would disappear.
Clay Rutledge at Bob’s Bait in Bakersfield is going to install the new system and says it will probably simplify sales in his store, but he worries that license sales will drop off because -- by his reading of the requirements -- a driver’s license or valid state ID card is required for swiping in the automated system.
“I think it’s going to be a mess,” said Rutledge. “They’ve been working on it for 15 years, but government agencies don’t know the ins and outs of running a business. If they have to produce an ID, a lot of guys here illegally aren’t going to buy them. And they’re sure not going to by a non-resident license. And there are tons of people who don’t have or who have had their licenses taken away.”
Rutledge also pointed out that sales of “gift licenses” are going to drop off because you won’t be able to actually buy a license for another angler, but you simply get a voucher (essentially a gift card) and the angler still has to complete the information on-line, by phone, or at a license vendor.
A personal example fits here. The Matthews typically give annual fishing licenses as gifts to each other at Christmas. That will probably change under this new system because we couldn’t actually give each other the license, and that means my wife probably would not have been the owner of an annual license this year if we had waited until a fishing trip before getting her a license. Or she might just have bought one or two one-day licenses instead of an annual license.
With fewer vendors and lost sales to impulse buyers, lost sales to non-IDed citizens, and lost gift sales, the revenue flowing into the DFG will almost certainly decline for fishing licenses. By going to this system exclusively, the DFG is making sales easier and more convenient on some fronts, but cutting their throats on others. Would it be unworkable for smaller vendors to continue selling paper licenses for a few years while the system is phased in and technology improves? In the future, will we actually be able to purchase licenses for friends and family members? Or how about over the phone, on the spot, stored as a digital license.
The automated system is long overdue and a good idea, but the DFG needs to listen to its vendors and accommodate the people who buy and sell those licenses.
DFG’s new automated license system will cost agency money in lost sales
By JIM MATTHEWS, Outdoor News Service
All hunting and fishing licenses will be available for sale only through the Department of Fish and Game’s new automated license data system starting January 1, 2011. You can purchase fishing licenses on-line now through this system, and license vendors throughout the state be switching to the new system exclusively for next year.
You won’t have to fill out a new paper license each year or buy and paste on a handful of stamps. You’ll be able to swipe your driver’s license at a vendor and it will spit out a paper hunting or fishing license for you to use with all the stamps included. For bigger vendors, it will speed the sales process and ease bookkeeping chores.
But a lot of smaller vendors throughout the state are likely to simple quit selling licenses. It is estimated that as many as half of the 1,800 license vendors statewide will cease selling licenses.
“If Fish and Game goes 100 percent automated, there’s no way I could afford to put in the equipment and install high speed Internet to sell licenses,” said Sandra Lopez at Santa Margarita Lake on the Central Coast. Lopez said they sell a lot of one-day licenses to people who are impulse fishermen and get talked into going out with a friend on a picnic or to people who forget their annual licenses at home. Those sales would disappear.
Clay Rutledge at Bob’s Bait in Bakersfield is going to install the new system and says it will probably simplify sales in his store, but he worries that license sales will drop off because -- by his reading of the requirements -- a driver’s license or valid state ID card is required for swiping in the automated system.
“I think it’s going to be a mess,” said Rutledge. “They’ve been working on it for 15 years, but government agencies don’t know the ins and outs of running a business. If they have to produce an ID, a lot of guys here illegally aren’t going to buy them. And they’re sure not going to by a non-resident license. And there are tons of people who don’t have or who have had their licenses taken away.”
Rutledge also pointed out that sales of “gift licenses” are going to drop off because you won’t be able to actually buy a license for another angler, but you simply get a voucher (essentially a gift card) and the angler still has to complete the information on-line, by phone, or at a license vendor.
A personal example fits here. The Matthews typically give annual fishing licenses as gifts to each other at Christmas. That will probably change under this new system because we couldn’t actually give each other the license, and that means my wife probably would not have been the owner of an annual license this year if we had waited until a fishing trip before getting her a license. Or she might just have bought one or two one-day licenses instead of an annual license.
With fewer vendors and lost sales to impulse buyers, lost sales to non-IDed citizens, and lost gift sales, the revenue flowing into the DFG will almost certainly decline for fishing licenses. By going to this system exclusively, the DFG is making sales easier and more convenient on some fronts, but cutting their throats on others. Would it be unworkable for smaller vendors to continue selling paper licenses for a few years while the system is phased in and technology improves? In the future, will we actually be able to purchase licenses for friends and family members? Or how about over the phone, on the spot, stored as a digital license.
The automated system is long overdue and a good idea, but the DFG needs to listen to its vendors and accommodate the people who buy and sell those licenses.
