Change to new license vendor has some scrambling

The Feb. 1 changeover in companies handling the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries’ Point-of-Sale Licensing Program has left some outdoorsmen scrambling for a place to buy a license.

The LDWF’s contract with Great Lodge of Tennessee expired in January and Nashville, Tenn.-based Automated License Systems, Inc. won the contract through the bidding process.

LDWF License Section administrator Janice Landry acknowledged there have been problems in linking some vendors around the state to the new systems, but ALS was working to iron out the wrinkles.

Several complaints came when Wal-Mart stores could not issue sports licenses over the past weekend. About 75 percent of the more than 80 Wal-Mart stores statewide were online and dispensing licenses and Landry said she expects all of them to be up and running in the coming days.

Landry said 420 of the 600 license vendors are operating.

“We cannot account for the (hunting) lodges because they are closed now and we believe the majority of the vendors are operating,” Landry said.

She pointed to the 10,936 licenses sold from Feb. 1-6 as proof that the new system was working. Most of those were fishing licenses. She said some 27,000 licenses were sold in February 2006.

“We are on track to handle that volume, based on only a week’s worth of sales,” Landry said. “There are still some problems to work through, and they are being addressed.”

Landry said the transition to ALS is going more smoothly this time as compared to the problems vendors and the LDWF encountered when Great Lodge took control a little more than three years ago.

Automated License Systems’ contract runs three years with two, one-year options.