I got my driving licence, after my medical; I can drive a van, yup, all that is fine, but my motorcycle entitlement has disappeared. I had a full unrestricted UK licence, and I got the basic provisional under 50cc class on my French licence but nothing else.
Phoning the number I was given, I got given another number which we’ve tried 15 times and is never answered. I’ve sent an email through ANTS and this too hasn’t been answered.
Any ideas on how to proceed? This has taken a good few months now. And it took long enough to get the licence in the first place.
Great idea!
I will do that if I reapply for the the third time; or, in the seemingly unlikely event that I ever get a response from CERT to my application a year ago…
I would not want to lose my motorcycle entitlement. We went through the pain of getting the CoC for 5 motorcycles and registering them here.
Have you had any luck contacting them? I have emailed a few times and had no replies. My licence photocard will be invalid in 7 weeks so I am getting a bit twitchy.
I also sent my UK license to Nantes, including motorcycle entitlement, nearly a year ago - it expires at the end of next month so hoping to get my French license back soon!
I had assumed the motorcycle entitlement would simply continue - I’ll let you know when (if) I get my French license…
As I understand it, they’re being returned unless they are near expiry or have points to add - my wife and I sent ours off at the same time, hers was returned, mine (near expiry) wasn’t, so I took that as confirmation of the above.
I do not believe that they are that organised.
Just over a year ago, my wife and I posted our applications off. Same day, same post box, same forms. They had different names, numbers and dates of course !
Just before Christmas, Jackie was contacted for a medical certificate if she wished to retain class C.
To date, I have not had any reply and my photocard expires in 6 weeks. Jackie’s still had a couple of years to go. Similarly I have not received any response to emails that I have sent regarding the first application, nor to requests for advice regarding the imminent expiry.
I phoned DVLA, who were happy to advise that it is nothing to do with them, and that I cannot renew my UK photocard. What they djd advise was that as far as they are concerned my permission to drive is not defined by the photocard’s expiry. They said that I could continue to drive legally in the UK with an expired photocard.
Someone suggested the facebook page below to me on a recent thread about exchanging licences.
It is run by someone that has a lot of knowledge about how the CERT/ANTS systems run.
The page is full of people making progress with applications and chasing mistakes: Facebook: Applying for a French Driving Licence
A trip to the prefecture elicited the right information and procedure, so I’m putting it up here in case others find themselves lacking some of the categories they applied for.
You have to go through ANTS and the relevant page is the one for an application for a new licence (nouvelle demande). Nothing to do with the page for exchanging foreign licences.
On that page, there’s a link for ‘errors of category’. You click on that, then need to fill out the information including what errors have been made and provide a photograph of recto-verso of your licence.
Now the bummer for me is that this is supposed to be done within 6 months of receiving the licence. I have been phoning and emailing since April and have only just found the correct procedure. I am hoping that I will end up with a friendly fonctionnaire who will ignore the dates… though I am prepared for disappointment.
I’ve now been asked to email the data to an address I already emailed on 7th June and still haven’t had a response. Have to see whether anything happens.