Missing Visitors Parking Permits – “seems to be a much broader problem”

“Dear PoPville,

After moving to a new house we applied for a 2014 visitor parking permit in August of this year. It is now the end of October and we still have not received it. In early October we called DDOT who said they had “lost” our online application and would get it approved and in the mail the next day. Two weeks later the online system listed our application as approved but we still had not received it in the mail. After numerous calls and tweets to DDOT I was finally able to get someone to look into it. After following up again, I heard from a DDOT “communications specialist” via email that the problem appears to be more systematic and “it’s not only yours, unfortunately” that has not been mailed out. Apparently there are “outside bodies who mail these out”. They claim that “they’re looking into next steps” and unhelpfully suggested we just go get a temporary one from our ward police station (which is not at all near our house) that would only last 15 days. They provided no timeline as to when we might receive our VPP. I’ve repeatedly asked to speak with the person at DDOT who is handling this matter but so far no one has returned my calls. I’m concerned that this seems to be a much broader problem. Has anyone else applied for a 2014 visitor parking permit that never arrived?”