ICBC phone lines, website jammed as thousands try to book road tests stalled by COVID-19

VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) — Knowing it was the first day to book new road tests with ICBC since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Sandra Arthur woke up early Monday.

She started trying to book online and over the phone at 7 a.m. Seven hours later, the tests were booked.

“That’s the misery that not only I, I’m sure thousands of other people faced this morning,” she tells NEWS 1130.

According to a spokesperson for ICBC, 14,500 tests were booked between midnight and mid-afternoon on Aug. 24. Class 5 and 7 road tests were suspended in March after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.

“All hands are on deck here at ICBC we’re doing everything we can to answer your calls, book your road test and then get you on the road,” says Joanna Linsangen.

“We certainly anticipated that the volume and the surge in inquiries for today, and so we did plan for that.”

But she does acknowledge that people like Arthur were likely frustrated when trying to book through the website.

RELATED: ICBC road test booking set to resume after COVID-19 stall

“When you receive that error message it’s simply telling you — and what happens on the back end — it’s that we’ve reached our maximum capacity on the number of people that can book a road test on our website at the same time. If you do experience that we ask you to just try again at a later time.”

Arthur says she got the error message dozens of times

“I even got as far as the sixth page where I was literally booking a time slot and the whole damn thing crashed,” she says.

“It was impossible, I was just pulling my hair out. I must have tried 30, 40, 50 times online and the system couldn’t cope.”

When trying to book over the phone the line would ring over and over, and ultimately the call would be dropped or she would get a busy signal.

“That happened so many times, so many times, so many times. And then I tried a different number and a miracle was they actually gave me the opportunity to leave my phone number.”

Around 2 p.m. she managed to book one test online, shortly after she got a call back to book the second test.

“I absolutely understand they probably had their server crashing because of the demand but you think somebody could have anticipated this,” she says.

“There may have been some people who perhaps had to give up and I have to admit that I almost gave up and thought it’s obvious there are too many people trying today.”

Arthur says she was lucky, but wonders how others are managing.

“Luckily I’m not working at the moment. But I’m thinking if you had a job, I don’t know how anyone could have been so persistent as I was.”

ICBC is adding staff and testing locations to meet the demand caused by the months-long stall in testing.

Linsangen says it’s going to be busy for the next while, but she expects the demand to eventually “level-off” as more tests get booked, and asks people trying to get through to be patient and keep trying.

“We can tell just by the volume alone people are very interested and keen to get their road test complete.”