DIR Contractor Registration Website is a Mess
DIR Launched New Registration Portal and its Hit or Miss
Have you tried to renew your DIR Contractor Registration and pay the annual $400 fee? Unless you are one of the lucky ones, you’ve probably given up.
DIR launched a new registration portal and your old logins do not work. You must create a new user account and that can be where the fun begins. You may not receive an email confirming your account in which case you are dead in the water.
If you are lucky, you may create your account and then hit a submit button, but the page goes back to giving you the same registration page except all your info you entered is gone. We’ve assisted some members in attempting to register and in only one instance were we able to move past that registration page and it was by pure dumb luck. We hit the back button on the computer after a short while and presto! we opened a page that showed registration “In-Progress” with another button saying, “Complete Registration.”
The Complete Registration button will take you to an application with all the same questions you have had to answer these past years, however the next glitch happens when asked about Worker Comp. The page doesn’t let you say sole prop/independent contractor as with the old system, it doesn’t give you that option. With a little persistence we were finally able to advance past that page without needing to enter policy information.
After all that we thought success was at hand! We were able to click on the fee payment portal but then the geniuses who devised this system using some third-party payment portal force you to create another login and password to pay your fee!
We got everything entered and finally hit the submit button, but the page goes blank and some sort of message pops up “data not found.” At that point we logged out for fear that doing anything more may result in multiple charges to a check card.
The next morning the bank did confirm the $400 fee was debited but going back into the DIR site, it still showed application pending and please complete application! We logged off and sent an email to DIR’s helpdesk (still waiting for a reply) regarding this whole fiasco. Our member wants their new certificate showing their new PW number, but it isn’t there. Our member called DIR and they said it sometimes takes 48 hours for their system to clear a payment!
One really must wonder who is responsible for such a messed-up launch of a new portal and why it was not sufficiently beta tested before being put out there… probably better to watch concrete dry than expect an answer to that question. The old system worked just fine and there were no delays.
We recommend you at least attempt to create your account (user name and password) and in the strong likelihood you are not able to successfully complete the registration process, protect yourself by sending an email to publicworks@dir.ca.gov describing the issue you are having with their registration portal.
We had our lobbyist contact DIR early on when this new portal launched about the problems and there seemed to be a hesitancy in acknowledging there was a major issue. At our urging DIR has finally placed the following notice on their website, might want to make sure your brokers know because until this is fixed, you probably won’t be successful in registering for the 2024-2025 fee period until they have fixed their IT issue. Here is the notice:
