The I Hate Bureaucracy thread

[bazfaz]

Please feel free to add your own infuriating stories. I don't want to be seen as a miserable git so I shall just post one (for now).

France has a very good medical service at the point where it is needed but sclerotic bureaucracy. There is no national register of patients; we have had to re-register when we changed our department. Mrs Faz gave the authorities in the Lot advance warning on about 15 September of our move. She telephoned after we arrived in the Lot on 22 Sept. A fortnight later she telephoned again to ask where our accreditation paper and plastic Carte Vitale were. And then again. And the again on 26 October. Today she telephoned to our old register in the Herault and was told that the lazy bums in the Lot had done nothing for 5 weeks until her fourth phone call on 26 October. We are told it will be another 3 weeks until we are re-registered. Frankly I think this is another lie.

[bjd]

I have been trying to get an online account with Gaz de France for several months now, just so I can see what they are charging me for. They haven't sent paper bills either. It's really a pain when you change anything, like a name to be billed. When I talked to them they said that it would cost me 15 € to see each bill I never received.

I hope you don't get sick, Baz.

And before anyone thinks moronic bureaucrats are limited to France, the Canadian immigration lost my daughter-in-law's application for permanent residence status, without informing her. When she called to see what was happening, they asked for another $500 and said she had to apply again. These were the relatives of the people who extended her student visa instead of giving her a work permit, so she ended up working illegally for a year.

[Deleted]

I feel that I have mastered bureaucracy over the years. I ask every conceivable question before preparing any documentation and when at all possible, I go and see the bureaucrats in person, making it clear that I will come back in person as often as necessary. This works a thousand times better than dealing on the telephone. I also tell them what a good job they are doing and how I am really counting on them to help me because I am just a fuckwit and thank god they have superior intelligence. Using this technique, I have managed to make official address changes without providing a shred of proof of the new address after watching the person in front of me being sent away in humiliation for the same reason.

[bjd]

And what do you do when the only contact possibility is a call centre?

[Deleted]

I write them a letter instead of calling. That way I know that my request is going to the real office instead of the call center in the suburbs of Agadir.

[bazfaz]

I hate banks. We bank with Credit Agricole which has the widest network in France - but it is organised in regions, each of which acts separately. Moving from Herault to Lot meant we were changing regions. To open our new account in Salviac and transfer our accounts from St Pons required 4 visits to the new bank and a total of 8 hours of meetings. And even now it is not complete. We have a savings account which gives us a fixed 4.5% interest tax-free (which is good these days). Looking on the internet on Thursday night Mrs Faz saw this account had vanished from the St Pons bank but had not reappeared here. It required 2 visits yesterday to our new bank; phone calls by both the bank and us to St Pons; 2 phone calls to some HQ somewhere to track down our account. It is in bureaucratic purdah until the end of next week when it will resurface at our bank in Salviac. What are these bureaucrats doing? Why do they make everything so stressful and time consuming for us?

When we said to the bank man in Salviac that we wanted to transfer money into this account do you know what his reaction was? He didn't say: Of course, monsieur; I'll do what you want as soon as I can. He asked: Why?

[bjd]

This is why the guy is working in Salviac and not in a big city somewhere.

I got so fed up with the Banque Populaire that I closed the account there and opened one in Credit lyonnais. No problems so far and they are actually efficient.

The last straw at the Banque Pop was when I stood in line and saw the woman ahead of me who had ordered US$ for a trip to Ecuador and three weeks later the bank handed over Turkish lire!! They are so incompetent.

[bazfaz]

When we went to Ecuador (where the local currency is the US dollar) I too ordered bucks from Credit Agricole. I specifically said I wanted the money in 20s and 50s (ever tried changing $100 on a third world bus journey). Of course it all came in 100s.

[bjd]

When I went to Ecuador this spring, I asked for US$ at my local LCL and she made sure I got 10s and 20s.

[Deleted]

Trying to get anything done here is and always has been a major hassle. So much so that it has become a joke. Add to that the Katrina debacle and all the red tape people are still trying to unravel and the piles and piles of records that were destroyed.
I have found that the most efficient way of dealing with these matters is to document every conversation I have,date,time,person with whom I spoke.I never call and rant,it goes nowhere. I always try to stay as calm as possible,maybe some idle chit chat thrown in(at one point I knew that the woman liked to bowl and I would inquire after her latest bowling score). I do write letters with accumulated documentation. The best method however,is to go to the place in person, documentation in hand,address the person by name,very businesslike and polite. Works 99% of the time.They see the pile of documentation and magically the problem gets resolved. No one wants to have to sift through a pile of papers,it entails more work.

[bazfaz]

Then there is our old friend Orange. The struggle with them had a new twist this past week. Originally when we moved house we told them our new address. They, in their tiny minds, decided this meant we were canceling our account. Nothing we could do stopped this bureaucratic juggernaut continuing on its path and cutting us off the internet for 10 days. For good measure they told us that we would be charged 100 euros if we did not return the Livebox (used for wifi in our house).

Orange restored our internet including the Livebox wifi connection.

And three days ago they charged us 100 euros for not returning the Livebox.

[Deleted]

Once I was incorrectly charged for some taxes. I went to the tax office, where they immediately saw their error and cancelled the taxes. Shortly thereafter, I received a penalty notice for 10% of the amount, because the penalty is 10% if you pay your taxes late.

[bjd]

On the bright side, I finally got a message from GDF that they were sending me a new password so that I could access my account. Of course it didn't work. I used every conceivable contact form on the GDF site, plus answering the mail I had received to say so.

I got a new email with a new password -- which actually worked! I could access my account! I sent a thank you reply and got a "you're welcome, glad I was able to help" in response.

[bazfaz]

We too have a good tax story.

We were on good terms with our tax inspector in Herault. Every year we went and she filled in our tax form with the information we gave. Earlier this year we got a phone call. She had been looking at our coding that the authorities somewhere had given us. At last she had been able to crack some previously incomprehensible bit and she found that we were being wrongly coded for social security payments. We got 300 euros back with similar savings in years to come.

[bazfaz]

I am resurrecting this thread. We pay local property taxes by direct debit. Somehow you think that saying we are leaving our old houseto the mayor, the treasury, the tax inspector, and starting to pay local taxes here would be good enough. But no. There is a special direct debit local tax office which apparently lives on its own little desert island with no contact with the bigger world and we didn't inform them until someone here told us to. Today an email came saying that because we informed them after 16 December there is nothing they can do to stop January's direct debit. How can they be so incompetent? They cannot tap a couple of lines into their computer during the last two weeks of the month?

[bazfaz]

Mrs Faz and I will be away in Greece for 6 weeks. We both take daily medicines. This morning the doctor was happy to give me the prescriptions but raised his eyebrows and shrugged: You will have problems - the pharmacy will explain.

The pharmacy did explain. New rules meant that we had to contact social security and they would send a letter authorising us to be given two months supply of pills at one go. The pharmacist asked when we were going. In a fortnight's time, I told her. Well, it is too late, she replied, because it takes the social security people a month to issue a letter of authorisation.

This is mad, I said.

This is France, she replied.

[bjd]

Dec 22, 2009 8:28:13 GMT bazfaz said:

Today an email came saying that because we informed them after 16 December there is nothing they can do to stop January's direct debit. How can they be so incompetent? They cannot tap a couple of lines into their computer during the last two weeks of the month?

Of course not. The last two weeks of December are filled with taking time off work to go Christmas shopping, having Christmas parties and taking off the holiday time they didn't take before.

[Deleted]

Strange. I have 3 month prescriptions because I told my doctor that I refused to waste my time in his office more often. However, I used to have to go to the pharmacy every month, because the boxes are for a one month supply. However, six months ago, they started making boxes with a 3-month supply, and that is what I get now. One of the reasons for these new formats is probably to get around the solidarity tax currently levied per box of medicine (0.50€ or whatever it is). This way it is just charged once instead of 3 times (not that I care -- my mutual insurance covers all of the cost).

[bazfaz]

Mrs Faz has a couple of medicines that come in 3 month boxes, so she is all right. My pills for high blood pressure and high cholesterol come in 28 or 30 day boxes. Unfortunately each of these has a side effect for which I have to take another pill. We travel light except for our plastic bag of pills.

[bazfaz]

Oh, another gripe. CPAM (the social security people) sent a letter which we got yesterday saying that they could not connect with our mutual insurer. This is AXA, the biggest in France, in Europe, for all I know in the whole universe.

[Deleted]

And it is also my bank.

[traveler63]

My grand daughter Kay went to get her drivers permit in Los Angeles. Of course she needed to have ID to do it so they took her birth certificate. The motor vehicles department had to issue her permit with her name misspelled (should be Kayleine) because the idiots that issue the birth certificate spelled it Kaylene. AND not one of her family noticed it.

[Deleted]

My father's name was incorrectly copied on my French documents, and I must now live with it. So my father is no longer the very classic James but the much more interesting and ambiguous Janus.

[spindrift]

AXA is my insurer too

[bazfaz]

We have been in our new house nearly six months. Before we went to Crete , mid January, we sent the notaire an email saying we had never had the final account (because of innate caution they always demand more money up front than you actually owe when they do the final reckoning). Common courtesy should mean she would reply to us. She didn't. Today Mrs Faz telephoned and was airily told that we could pick up the documents and the cheque whenever we liked. Of course she didn't post the cheque - the money has been earning interest in her account.

[bjd]

I just thought of this thread today. Still battling GDF. I finally managed to get an online account I can actually connect to. My husband went to Paris this past weekend, read the meters and today I connected to put the right readings. Well, the computer system won't accept it because it is lower than their estimate, based on God knows what.

The solution is being in Paris in mid-May and waiting for the tecnician to arrive to read the meter. Meanwhile, I am being billed for gas I don't use.

[Deleted]

Ha ha, I had the same problem with EDF in reverse. This winter I heated myself better than in previous years, and since I am all-electric obviously the bill was going to be higher. Usually, my biggest winter bill runs about 280€ for two months, which is still pretty cheap I think, since I cook, heat, bathe and run the computer room with its 50 computers for this site all on the same meter. I was thinking that maybe I would treat myself to about 400€ for once due to all the extra heat.

But I give my meter reading by internet, and the EDF site refused to accept my reading because they felt it was an anomaly. "If you still wish to report these figures, please phone our customer service department." Well, dammit, if I wanted to talk to them or see them, I wouldn't be doing my meter over the internet. So I fiddled with the readings but the site kept rejecting me so I figured "screw them" and subtracted 1000 kwh from the reading. The site happily accepted that figure, so my last bill was only something like 180€ which is really an anomaly. I'll try to jack up the figures next time, but I guess I will call them if it is rejected again.

[spaceneedle]

Here's mine:

Two weeks ago I got my first speeding ticket since about 1996 for going 31 MPH in a 25 MPH zone. Mind you I was in BFE-- in the middle of the day-- on a two lane road, with my dog in the car. ::)A sheriff's deputy was hiding in the driveway of a farm and got me. He seemed almost apologetic about the ticket (I know he was there getting his quota because the State is desperate for revenue right now) and explained that I could get it 'deferred' by the court. What this means is that since I have a good driving record, I can ask the court to defer the citation for a year and if I don't have any more citations, it disappears. I must also pay $150 for this "priviledge". So... I was like, "Fine.." The officer then tells me emphatically that I MUST submit my request for the deferment to the court within 7 days of the citation.

So I high tail it over to the court and get the paperwork and turn it in. What is interesting is that the court does not really volunteer that deferments are available. You have to ASK. So what I did was after I filled out the paperwork, I made copies of everything and had the court clerk stamp them with the court's stamp with the date and time. I did this because a friend of mine once paid a ticket and it didn't get entered into the court database properly and she found out that the DOL had suspended her license and there was a warrant for her arrest for the unpaid ticket! So because of that, I do not trust the drones and wanted that stuff stamped so I could keep it in my car in case I am stopped again.

Anyway, I was told I'd receive something from the court in a few days. A week has passed and nothing. So yesterday I went to the court again and get this-- was told the officer has not even turned IN the ticket yet. So I have a request for a deferment that I had to get in within the all important 7 days! And the f-ing cop has not even turned in the ticket. I asked the clerk incredulously if there was a time limit required for the officer to submit the citation to the court and the response was a blank, clueless look and "Uh, no...." So basically this dude can sit on the citation as long as he wants.

I am going to give it another week and if it is not in the system by then, I am going into court and asking the Judge to dismiss this nonsense. It's already taken up way too much of my time.

/rant over

[bazfaz]

Another rant against the bureaucrats. When we left our old house we read the meter on the day we left and (as requested) put the reading in the letterbox of the mairie. They are meant to deal with this.

So when we got back from Crete we have a bill sent to our new address for the meter reading for the whole of last year plus a billing for next year's fixed charge for a house we no longer own.

[bazfaz]

CPam, the medical bureaucracy, were so inefficient when we moved house they did't register us until 1 November in the Lot. So far as CPAM in the Herault are concerned we left on 22 September. Nobody will pay the bills we ran up during those weeks. Since this includes a hospital visit we are jilted of several hundred euros.

And yet it is all the French health service.