British Columbia Registration Decals

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Disappearing Ink - 2017 Decals (and 2018 Decals!)

According to a Bulletin released by ICBC on February 6, 2017, the ink is "fading" on a small batch of decals and motorists who find themselves affected are being encouraged to come in for free replacements.

Apparently this problem is not as prevalent as the sheeting peeling off plates with "approximately 100 incidents of fading decals [having] been brought to ICBC's attention out of more than 2 million active number plate insurance decals currently on B.C. vehicles."

"Fading" is certainly one way to describe the problem, but we here at BCpl8s.ca think "disappearing" ink to be a more accurate description as the first instance of this we saw was a decal that had lost about 95% of its ink - leaving only a green rectangle.

Moreover, once we began to look for these decals, they were not too hard to find (but not easy to photograph), making us query the number of vehicles that might actually be affected (more likely in the thousands, if not tens of thousands).

We here at BCpl8s.ca even conducted a controlled experiment with the decal on one of our fleet vehicles at the end of 2017 (after the decal had expired) to see how easily the ink would come off. The video below shows what happened:

For posterity, we have archived a copy of the Bulletin No. 17.

The problems with the 2017 decals prompted ICBC to recall and replace all the decals for July to December of 2017 with a third type (what we are going to call "Type 3") of decal design:

Decal Problems
Type 1 - January to June	Type 2 - July to August	Type 3 - July to August

The problems with the 2017 decals also occurred with the 2018 decals, prompting ICBC to similarly recall and replace all 2018 decals:

Type 1 - Not applicable for 2018 decals

Type 2 - January to June

Type 3 - January to December

Disappearing Ink - 2019 (can you believe it!)

In what seems to be becoming a yearly ritual, new registration decals start to shed their ink in late spring and early summer for reasons that are not really clear. 2019 seems to be no different despite our assumption that ICBC and its supplier had sorted this problem out after the mess of the 2017 & 2018 decals:

To be sure that this is a "thing" and not merely a case of someone using a really strong detergent to wash their car/truck, we tweeted ICBC to see what they had to say and this was their response:

... we are using a new product, so this should just be a one-off occurrence. If this is your decal, please email social@icbc.com with your plate number, full name, & contact details & we can arrange a free decal replacement.

Doesn't really sound like a denial, does it?

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