MamaDuck's cold, which has been incubating for a while, burst into its full glory this morning. So she hasn't gone to work, and needs to see a doctor. In our usual lackadaisical way, we haven't registered with the local Health Centre since we moved in April. And that's because we didn't get a new Empadronomiento* when we moved. We nearly did: we got as far as downloading the form and filling it in, but didn't actually give it to anybody. So, off we trot to the Ayuntamiento*, along with half the population of our district. When we found the building, there was a queue to get through the door (all bags and bodies were being x-rayed). Then there was a queue to get a ticket for the queue. And then there was the crowd of people waiting to be seen by about 15 officials. Our number came up after about 50 minutes, and we presented every scrap of documentation we had to the nice lady at the counter. She looked at it, tapped something into the computer, and handed us the sheet of paper she'd just printed. It was clearly not an empadronomiento. It was an appointment for tomorrow.
Ho hum. So MamaDuck got herself an appointment at our old Health Centre in Chueca, and has gone to cough and splutter all over a doctor.
*Empadronomiento =registration with the local council so they know how many binmen, schools and traffic wardens they need.
* Ayuntamiento - Town Hall.
Showing posts with label bureaucracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bureaucracy. Show all posts
Monday, 19 October 2009
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Spanish Bureaucracy
Okay, I admit it. We are stupid. We've lived in Madrid for about eighteen months now, and only just got registered with the local Health Centre. And that was only because MamaDuck needed to see a doctor. Yes, yes, we always planned to get registered before the need actually arose, but there's always something more interesting to do than dealing with Spanish bureaucracy.
We have a folder that we thought contained every document that could ever be needed for any dealings with the government, and we took it along to the Health Centre.
Here's what you need:
1) Empadronomiento. This is a document from the Census and Statistics Office, and is considered to be proof of where you live. It's important because if we lived in a different barrio they'd have sent us to the Health Centre there. We have the empadronomiento.
2) Original NIE certificate. This is your Foreigner's Identity Number, and it proves you have the right to live in Spain. I had mine. MamaDuck has lost hers. Poo.
3) Social Security Number. Yes, we both have these, but the Health Centre insists that we get a document that says what our numbers are. But here's MamaDuck's number on a payslip, and here's mine on a tax document. No good, go to the SS and request the document. Double poo.
So MamaDuck retires to bed with her cold/flu/chest infection, and I trudge off to the Social Security office in pouring rain, strong winds and freezing cold. It's on a street quite near us, but it turns out to be an insanely long street and the office is at the far end of it. I get two forms, and am called to the desk before I have a chance to fill them in. I explain I need one document for me, and one for absent wife. Oh, no, absent wife must complete the authorisation section on the back. More poo. I trudge home, wake MamaDuck from her slumber, fill in the forms, and get the Metro back to the SS office. They issue the two documents, and then I return to the Health Centre.
They do my registration, give me a temporary document that allows me to see a doctor, and eventually they'll issue a Medical Card. They absolutely refuse to process MamaDuck's application without the NIE certificate. But we know the number of the NIE, it's on her payslips, so why do they insist on this crappy bit of paper? It's the rules, that's why.
But listen, they say. Your wife can see a doctor, but you have to pay 45 Euros. If you return within five working days with the NIE certificate, we'll refund the money. I roll on the floor laughing, and explain that I don't think there's any possibility that we could get a duplicate certificate within five weeks, never mind five days.
Anyhoo, the next day MamaDuck got some photocopies of the certificate from the admin people where she works. The original is still missing. She went back to the Health Centre and they accepted the document. So she's now stoked up with antibiotics, and hopefully will be better soon, although the doc says half of Spain currently has this infection, and it can take a while to go away.
I was talking to an Irish rocket scientist (stop giggling at the back) about this. He's been in Madrid for a few months and has just got his appointment to get his NIE. In June. When I told him about the 45 Euros fee, instead of outrage, he said that in Ireland, you have to pay 50 Euros every time you need to see a doc. And it never gets refunded.
I guess we don't know we're born.
We have a folder that we thought contained every document that could ever be needed for any dealings with the government, and we took it along to the Health Centre.
Here's what you need:
1) Empadronomiento. This is a document from the Census and Statistics Office, and is considered to be proof of where you live. It's important because if we lived in a different barrio they'd have sent us to the Health Centre there. We have the empadronomiento.
2) Original NIE certificate. This is your Foreigner's Identity Number, and it proves you have the right to live in Spain. I had mine. MamaDuck has lost hers. Poo.
3) Social Security Number. Yes, we both have these, but the Health Centre insists that we get a document that says what our numbers are. But here's MamaDuck's number on a payslip, and here's mine on a tax document. No good, go to the SS and request the document. Double poo.
So MamaDuck retires to bed with her cold/flu/chest infection, and I trudge off to the Social Security office in pouring rain, strong winds and freezing cold. It's on a street quite near us, but it turns out to be an insanely long street and the office is at the far end of it. I get two forms, and am called to the desk before I have a chance to fill them in. I explain I need one document for me, and one for absent wife. Oh, no, absent wife must complete the authorisation section on the back. More poo. I trudge home, wake MamaDuck from her slumber, fill in the forms, and get the Metro back to the SS office. They issue the two documents, and then I return to the Health Centre.
They do my registration, give me a temporary document that allows me to see a doctor, and eventually they'll issue a Medical Card. They absolutely refuse to process MamaDuck's application without the NIE certificate. But we know the number of the NIE, it's on her payslips, so why do they insist on this crappy bit of paper? It's the rules, that's why.
But listen, they say. Your wife can see a doctor, but you have to pay 45 Euros. If you return within five working days with the NIE certificate, we'll refund the money. I roll on the floor laughing, and explain that I don't think there's any possibility that we could get a duplicate certificate within five weeks, never mind five days.
Anyhoo, the next day MamaDuck got some photocopies of the certificate from the admin people where she works. The original is still missing. She went back to the Health Centre and they accepted the document. So she's now stoked up with antibiotics, and hopefully will be better soon, although the doc says half of Spain currently has this infection, and it can take a while to go away.
I was talking to an Irish rocket scientist (stop giggling at the back) about this. He's been in Madrid for a few months and has just got his appointment to get his NIE. In June. When I told him about the 45 Euros fee, instead of outrage, he said that in Ireland, you have to pay 50 Euros every time you need to see a doc. And it never gets refunded.
I guess we don't know we're born.
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Un Día Malo [A Bad Day]
Neither BetterArf nor I were surprised when we turned on our computers this morning and discovered that the Internet was not working. The landline phone was also kaput. See, we've had these services for about six weeks now, and not paid a bean for them. This is not because of any ideological hatred of Telefonica, it's just that we have not yet figured out how to give them money. BetterArf has tried several times to pay on the Internet, but despite her not-bad-at-all Spanish she has been completely unable to figure out how to do it.
Never mind, I said, I'll go to one of their shops and do it. I had to wait until 10am to do this, and at 10.01 I marched through the door of our nearest Telefonica shop (I knew from previous experience that going to the Telefonica HQ would be a total waste of time). The guy in the shop was surprised to see a customer so early in the day, and astounded when I explained that I wanted to pay my bill. Nono, he says, we only sell mobile phones. You must go to a Post Office or a bank to pay your bill. Oh, right, sorry.
No problem, there's a Correos office just around the corner from us, so I go there. Well, it's Correos (Spanish Post Office) alright, but it's just a sorting office: there's no retail activity going on there. Bugger this. I phone my Spanish-speaking buddy to find out how you actually pay your phone bill. Oh, he says, banks. But only between 8.30 and 10 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Hmmm. Don't worry, he says, I'll call Telefonica. So he did: he had good news. We have not been disconnected. And bad news. It's a line fault: it'll take anything up to 24 hours to be fixed. Right.
I'm wandering around the middle of town, and I remember that there is an actual Correos in the basement of El Corté Inglés. I go there and present my bills, half-expecting to be told that they only deal with these things when there is an x in the month and only if your name is Ignacio. But no, once we've established that I actually want to pay both bills, the very helpful lady taps various numbers into the computer. It won't accept the CIF/NIE/pasaporte number that is on the bill. Hmm. I call BetterArf, and we remember that her old passport was stolen, and Telefonica do not have the new passport number. She gives me the number, and I go home because I've just realised that there's a few things that I need to post: I get them ready and then I return to the Correos. I get the same lady and she taps in the correct passport number. Still no joy.
Pointless bureaucracy part 1
Now, can somebody tell me why this ID thing is so important to Telefonica? We know what the account is, based on the phone number: what is the point of the CIF/NIE/pasaporte number? I'm sure if Osama Bin Laden wanted to pay my phone bill, he could organise it much easier than I can.
Anyway, as I was heading home in the afternoon (having spent half an hour in an Internet Caff making sure I had no earth-shattering emails), my mobile rang and it was a Telefonica engineer asking if my phone was working now. I said I'd be home in ten minutes. It was working when I got back, but he was still in the vicinity and came up to check. And an hour later I had a phone call from a computer at Telefonica suggesting that I press 0 if the problem was fixed, or 1 if it wasn't. So that was pretty good service: the challenge now is to fix things so that we can actually give the buggers money.
Pointless bureaucracy part 2.
This one really irritates me. When we moved into our apartment in Dubai, five years ago, we had to pay a 2000 dirham deposit (current value €370: original value, well over €500, due to the fall of the US dollar, to which the dirham is linked) . We would quite like to get this money back before the dollar plummets further and our deposit ends up completely valueless. Initially, when we moved to Madrid, it was not important: I kind of assumed that the landlord would eventually get their act together and pop the money into my bank account. But nothing happened for several months. Eventually I emailed them via their website. No response. A month later I called them. Oh we sent you emails! Really, which address? The old Dubai-based one, the one that I had disconnected a few days before I left. Not the nice shiny GMail one that I had gone to great lengths to make sure they knew about. Hmmm. Anyway, it's our fault, we didn't give them a final bill from the electricity and water company. Indeed we did not, because the luz y aqua did not turn up to take a final reading until the day we moved out, rather than the previous day that we had booked them for. So, as it was then the weekend, they had no office open that could actually produce a final bill.
Well, says my landlord, that's not my fault. No, says I, and neither is it mine. I email the utilities people asking for a final statement. A week later they email it to me and I copy it to the landlord. The utilities company owes me money from the deposit that I had paid them, which I or an authorised representative can collect at any of their branches. Yeah, right.
Refund please, oh landlord? Now you have to fill in some forms. OK, I say, email them to me. And they did. Three completely fucking pointless forms.
1) Bank details: same as ever. You've had these on file since before I moved in.
2) Lost document disclaimer. This is crazy. Because I'm not an anally-retentive asshole who keeps receipts for five years and more, I no longer have the receipt from them that says I actually paid them the deposit. They undoubtedly do have a copy on file, both paper versions (which they are very fond of) and on the computer. But I have to sign a disclaimer that says I am a stupid pillock and in the event that they actually refund the money, I promise not to claim it again. What perverted mind came up with this, I wonder? And the logic: they have always charged this deposit, they do not let their flats to anyone unless the deposit is paid, therefore I must have paid it.
3) Some kind of tracking form: yes, I returned the keys, yes I'm moving out, some other crap.
Anyway, I get these idiotic documents and I email the landlord and say I'll sign them and fax them back. Ooh, no, she says. We need the originals back. Or I'll print them off, sign them, scan them an email them to you. We need the originals back. For God's sake; are they collecting Biro ink? I know from many years of experience that the UAE Postal Service is one of the worst on the planet. I have a bit of a look at alternatives - FedEx (and I hope to God I've got this wrong) want over €100 to do the job. Correos have alternatives that are faster/safer than regular post, but none of them seem to work outside Europe/America. In the end I settle for regular post, and no doubt I'll end up regretting it.
I hate bureaucrats.
Never mind, I said, I'll go to one of their shops and do it. I had to wait until 10am to do this, and at 10.01 I marched through the door of our nearest Telefonica shop (I knew from previous experience that going to the Telefonica HQ would be a total waste of time). The guy in the shop was surprised to see a customer so early in the day, and astounded when I explained that I wanted to pay my bill. Nono, he says, we only sell mobile phones. You must go to a Post Office or a bank to pay your bill. Oh, right, sorry.
No problem, there's a Correos office just around the corner from us, so I go there. Well, it's Correos (Spanish Post Office) alright, but it's just a sorting office: there's no retail activity going on there. Bugger this. I phone my Spanish-speaking buddy to find out how you actually pay your phone bill. Oh, he says, banks. But only between 8.30 and 10 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Hmmm. Don't worry, he says, I'll call Telefonica. So he did: he had good news. We have not been disconnected. And bad news. It's a line fault: it'll take anything up to 24 hours to be fixed. Right.
I'm wandering around the middle of town, and I remember that there is an actual Correos in the basement of El Corté Inglés. I go there and present my bills, half-expecting to be told that they only deal with these things when there is an x in the month and only if your name is Ignacio. But no, once we've established that I actually want to pay both bills, the very helpful lady taps various numbers into the computer. It won't accept the CIF/NIE/pasaporte number that is on the bill. Hmm. I call BetterArf, and we remember that her old passport was stolen, and Telefonica do not have the new passport number. She gives me the number, and I go home because I've just realised that there's a few things that I need to post: I get them ready and then I return to the Correos. I get the same lady and she taps in the correct passport number. Still no joy.
Pointless bureaucracy part 1
Now, can somebody tell me why this ID thing is so important to Telefonica? We know what the account is, based on the phone number: what is the point of the CIF/NIE/pasaporte number? I'm sure if Osama Bin Laden wanted to pay my phone bill, he could organise it much easier than I can.
Anyway, as I was heading home in the afternoon (having spent half an hour in an Internet Caff making sure I had no earth-shattering emails), my mobile rang and it was a Telefonica engineer asking if my phone was working now. I said I'd be home in ten minutes. It was working when I got back, but he was still in the vicinity and came up to check. And an hour later I had a phone call from a computer at Telefonica suggesting that I press 0 if the problem was fixed, or 1 if it wasn't. So that was pretty good service: the challenge now is to fix things so that we can actually give the buggers money.
Pointless bureaucracy part 2.
This one really irritates me. When we moved into our apartment in Dubai, five years ago, we had to pay a 2000 dirham deposit (current value €370: original value, well over €500, due to the fall of the US dollar, to which the dirham is linked) . We would quite like to get this money back before the dollar plummets further and our deposit ends up completely valueless. Initially, when we moved to Madrid, it was not important: I kind of assumed that the landlord would eventually get their act together and pop the money into my bank account. But nothing happened for several months. Eventually I emailed them via their website. No response. A month later I called them. Oh we sent you emails! Really, which address? The old Dubai-based one, the one that I had disconnected a few days before I left. Not the nice shiny GMail one that I had gone to great lengths to make sure they knew about. Hmmm. Anyway, it's our fault, we didn't give them a final bill from the electricity and water company. Indeed we did not, because the luz y aqua did not turn up to take a final reading until the day we moved out, rather than the previous day that we had booked them for. So, as it was then the weekend, they had no office open that could actually produce a final bill.
Well, says my landlord, that's not my fault. No, says I, and neither is it mine. I email the utilities people asking for a final statement. A week later they email it to me and I copy it to the landlord. The utilities company owes me money from the deposit that I had paid them, which I or an authorised representative can collect at any of their branches. Yeah, right.
Refund please, oh landlord? Now you have to fill in some forms. OK, I say, email them to me. And they did. Three completely fucking pointless forms.
1) Bank details: same as ever. You've had these on file since before I moved in.
2) Lost document disclaimer. This is crazy. Because I'm not an anally-retentive asshole who keeps receipts for five years and more, I no longer have the receipt from them that says I actually paid them the deposit. They undoubtedly do have a copy on file, both paper versions (which they are very fond of) and on the computer. But I have to sign a disclaimer that says I am a stupid pillock and in the event that they actually refund the money, I promise not to claim it again. What perverted mind came up with this, I wonder? And the logic: they have always charged this deposit, they do not let their flats to anyone unless the deposit is paid, therefore I must have paid it.
3) Some kind of tracking form: yes, I returned the keys, yes I'm moving out, some other crap.
Anyway, I get these idiotic documents and I email the landlord and say I'll sign them and fax them back. Ooh, no, she says. We need the originals back. Or I'll print them off, sign them, scan them an email them to you. We need the originals back. For God's sake; are they collecting Biro ink? I know from many years of experience that the UAE Postal Service is one of the worst on the planet. I have a bit of a look at alternatives - FedEx (and I hope to God I've got this wrong) want over €100 to do the job. Correos have alternatives that are faster/safer than regular post, but none of them seem to work outside Europe/America. In the end I settle for regular post, and no doubt I'll end up regretting it.
I hate bureaucrats.
Monday, 15 October 2007
Bureaucracy
It could be to do with my advancing years (I'll be 50 on the 20th of this month if anyone wants to congratulate, commiserate or just pop round for a caña*), or maybe I've just got used to it after more than ten years in the Middle East, but pointless bureaucracy doesn't drive me nuts like it used to. However, I had an experience a few weeks ago that left me wanting to strangle somebody. And it wasn't them greasy wops either, it was the Brits.
Shortly after we arrived in Madrid, BetterArf had the misfortune to have her bag stolen. A bit like Hermione Granger's bag in the Deathly Hallows, it contained everything a sensible lady could ever want or need; money, camera, toyboy, memory stick, mobile phone, British Passport. Because BetterArf is at work during the pitifully small number of hours that the British Consulate deigns to open its doors to the public, I was delegated to submit the application for a new passport.
Now, I don't know if other countries do this, but Britain requires that you submit 2 photographs, one of which is countersigned on the back by someone who has known you for at least two years. And not just anyone - it cannot be a relative, and it has to be a 'professional' person (not to be confused with a 'professional person') - something like a lawyer or a bank manager or a Justice of the Peace. And it must have a valid UK passport.
Well, we know very few people in Spain, and certainly nobody here has known us for more than a couple of months. So BetterArf got the Director of the language school where she works to countersign, and wrote a note on the form explaining the circumstances.
Earlie one morning, I show up at the Consulate, which is on the fourth floor of a very dismal office block. There is a straggly queue almost bursting out of the door. I stand in this for a bit, and then an armed security guard with a list starts going down the line, checking people off the list. It seems they all have appointments. Bugger! She got to me, and of course she spikka no Ingless. After a while she calls her colleague over. He speaks a little English, realises I'm not trying to claim political asylum in the UK and sends me through the X-ray machine and lets me in.
When I get to the counter I present the sheaf of documents that BetterArf has given me. The youth peruses them, and spots that the counter-signatory says she has only known BetterArf for a couple of months. He says this is no good, we will have to get it signed by someone in Dubai or the UK. I protest - this will take ages to do and she needs a passport so she can get paid and pay tax and be legal etc. Foolishly, I suggest that we'll complete another form, and lie about the length of time the countersignatory has known BetterArf.
'We do check, you know.' He says. 'We don't give British passports to just anybody.'
I'm kind of offended by this; they don't 'give' passports to anybody at all - we pay twice what anyone else in Europe has to pay, and in my experience no countersignatory has ever been contacted.
'Hmm', says the counter person, 'does your wife have a bank account in Spain?'
'Yes, she does.'
'Then get the Bank Manager to sign it.' I can't help it. I snigger.
'You're laughing? Why are you laughing, I'm trying to help you and you're laughing.' Get a grip Keefie.
'I'm sorry, it's what I do. But I am amused by the idea that you will trust the word of a bank manager who I guarantee has never set eyes upon my wife.' I don't add that the bank manager will certainly not be a British passport holder, and decide not to embark on an exposition of the general untrustworthiness of banks (in my cynical head).
'I'll go and check.' He says. He goes. He comes back. He checks on the computer. BetterArf is there; all the details from her previous passport application in Dubai.
'Right. That'll probably be ok. Give me your credit card.'
'Don't have one, got cash.'
'We prefer credit cards.'
'Yes, but I don't have one, I've got actual cash money.'
'Hmmm. Ok. Come back in a fortnight.
*small beer
Shortly after we arrived in Madrid, BetterArf had the misfortune to have her bag stolen. A bit like Hermione Granger's bag in the Deathly Hallows, it contained everything a sensible lady could ever want or need; money, camera, toyboy, memory stick, mobile phone, British Passport. Because BetterArf is at work during the pitifully small number of hours that the British Consulate deigns to open its doors to the public, I was delegated to submit the application for a new passport.
Now, I don't know if other countries do this, but Britain requires that you submit 2 photographs, one of which is countersigned on the back by someone who has known you for at least two years. And not just anyone - it cannot be a relative, and it has to be a 'professional' person (not to be confused with a 'professional person') - something like a lawyer or a bank manager or a Justice of the Peace. And it must have a valid UK passport.
Well, we know very few people in Spain, and certainly nobody here has known us for more than a couple of months. So BetterArf got the Director of the language school where she works to countersign, and wrote a note on the form explaining the circumstances.
Earlie one morning, I show up at the Consulate, which is on the fourth floor of a very dismal office block. There is a straggly queue almost bursting out of the door. I stand in this for a bit, and then an armed security guard with a list starts going down the line, checking people off the list. It seems they all have appointments. Bugger! She got to me, and of course she spikka no Ingless. After a while she calls her colleague over. He speaks a little English, realises I'm not trying to claim political asylum in the UK and sends me through the X-ray machine and lets me in.
When I get to the counter I present the sheaf of documents that BetterArf has given me. The youth peruses them, and spots that the counter-signatory says she has only known BetterArf for a couple of months. He says this is no good, we will have to get it signed by someone in Dubai or the UK. I protest - this will take ages to do and she needs a passport so she can get paid and pay tax and be legal etc. Foolishly, I suggest that we'll complete another form, and lie about the length of time the countersignatory has known BetterArf.
'We do check, you know.' He says. 'We don't give British passports to just anybody.'
I'm kind of offended by this; they don't 'give' passports to anybody at all - we pay twice what anyone else in Europe has to pay, and in my experience no countersignatory has ever been contacted.
'Hmm', says the counter person, 'does your wife have a bank account in Spain?'
'Yes, she does.'
'Then get the Bank Manager to sign it.' I can't help it. I snigger.
'You're laughing? Why are you laughing, I'm trying to help you and you're laughing.' Get a grip Keefie.
'I'm sorry, it's what I do. But I am amused by the idea that you will trust the word of a bank manager who I guarantee has never set eyes upon my wife.' I don't add that the bank manager will certainly not be a British passport holder, and decide not to embark on an exposition of the general untrustworthiness of banks (in my cynical head).
'I'll go and check.' He says. He goes. He comes back. He checks on the computer. BetterArf is there; all the details from her previous passport application in Dubai.
'Right. That'll probably be ok. Give me your credit card.'
'Don't have one, got cash.'
'We prefer credit cards.'
'Yes, but I don't have one, I've got actual cash money.'
'Hmmm. Ok. Come back in a fortnight.
*small beer
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