Photo by sally henny penny.

Adam Rosenberg recently visited the District’s Department of Motor Vehicles website to change his address. He was impressed with the online upgrades that the DMV had made over the last year — even though the document which the DMV required to verify his new address, a Word file that anyone could have slapped together, was hardly foolproof. But Rosenberg wasn’t out to dupe anyone. He let it slide and chalked it up to the cost of doing things online as opposed to waiting in the sometimes interminable lines at one of the DMV’s service centers.

Yesterday, Rosenberg got a package in the mail, which he thought was his shiny new driver’s license. But the license inside belonged to someone else.

“I’m sitting here looking at this letter that has all my information, and somebody else’s identification,” said Rosenberg. “Someone just carelessly sent me someone else’s [license].”

Fortunately for that individual, Rosenberg isn’t looking to assume anyone’s identity, and he called the DMV to report the issue. After sitting through an automated service that “didn’t go anywhere for about half an hour,” he was transferred to a customer service representative, who immediately transferred him to the office of the Director; the person who answered the phone gave Rosenberg two options: he could mail back the license, or come to one of the DMV’s brick-and-mortar locations to rectify the issue.

“They didn’t seem to understand how huge of a problem this could be,” Rosenberg said. “The way [the representative] was talking with me was like I was trying to pay a parking ticket. It wasn’t really resonating that this is someone’s driver’s license.”