Renewal of Expired License Question

[wo5m]

They say you have a year after your license expires to renew. Does DPS have to have all the documentation before your next birthday or does the date you started your application and/or date took the renewal class count? Let say you take the renewal class two months before your next birthday and your application(CHL-100P) gets lost in the mail and the date passes, Do you have to start all over?

License expired last year
Took my renewal class: March 16
App started on line: March 16
Mailed CHL-100P: March 18
Birthday: First part of May
Current status: Waiting for Application

Unfortunately, my wife sent the app without delivery confirmation.

[djjoshuad]

I recommend calling the DPS and asking for a status. It'll mean waiting on hold for 20 minutes or so, but then you'll know for sure what's going on. The website is inaccurate at best.

[wo5m]

Well I called DPS(spent nearly 30min on hold) and asked them about the status, there wasn’t much that they could tell me. All they said was they have no record of it in their system. I then inquired about what date counted as the official renewal date(ie renew class, online application started, date received, etc). They told me if the documents were not physically received by my birthday it would be invalid. So that question was answered.

I also asked the same questions using the email submitting. The first response I got was the following canned response:

Once documents are received by the department, they undergo processing before being entered into the system for the applicant to track. Please allow more time for your record to reflect the receipt of documentation.

They didn’t even attempt to answer the individual questions in the e-mail.

I decided to wait and see what happens if nothing updated by the 25th I was going to connect the CHL instructor and see if I could get a duplicate CHL-100P and send it overnight to Austin. As it turns out the site updated last night and they did receive it.

Moral of the story is NEVER send your paperwork in without delivery confirmation.

Randy