European integration… the Dutch style!

So the European Union is integrating. Great. When I was a kid, I was a real idealist and I believed in European integration, like we’re all one big European family and our national borders and identities are secondary to the larger European purpose. Something like the US but then on the old continent. At school I learnt there were two dimensions to European integration: widening and deepening. Widening stands for geographic integration, literally the widening of the political area called the EU. Deepening on the other hand stands for the increasing intensity of cooperation, covering more areas other than just basic trade, something like now that we have the common currency, in the future we may even have a common foreign policy. Nobody believes it, but that’s the idea.

With my Central European background, I figured widening was the more relevant bit considering my own current situation. After all, the Czech Republic would become member of this European elite club and life would be much easier for all of us in terms of travel, study and work. After six years of residence in the NL I assembled huge piles of documents testifying to my being a decent citizen and allowing me to extend my residence permit, one year at a time. All this would be over in May 2004. Now May 1 used to be celebrated in socialist Czechoslovakia for very different reasons; you know the workers’ day or day of labour or what the official title may be. Since 2004, May 1 will be remembered for another reason: the Czech accession to the EU!

Like every previous year, I sent my papers to the IND (the Dutch immigration office whose poetic name translates literally as the Integration and Naturalisation Service (service?)). I thought this year and all the coming years the procedure would be simpler, after all, we’re now European brothers and sisters, right? I waited and I waited and I paid my fees and I waited and I waited. No sign of a new permit. My permit expired in July and it was already end of August so I waited some more and then made a phone call. I mentioned the 0900 concept with regard to Casema, well, the IND uses it as well. Only their waiting time is like double.

Finally I get a Dutch lady on the line. Hello, … (they’re always so friendly on the phone, I wonder why the whole thing is such a bureaucratic mess nonetheless). I say I’m inquiring about my new permit and I sent them my papers a long time ago and paid my fees and all and there’s no sign of a new permit and I need it for various purposes (like applying for jobs, my most crucial activity lately). She says aha, understood. The whole IND is running far behind their regular schedule and it may take another three months to process my application. Three months? That makes it six months of waiting time altogether, and the silly permit is only valid for a year to begin with, so that means half the time I don’t even have it and by the time I receive it, it’s nearly expired.

So I say what next, I need a proof of legal residence. Aha, the woman says, we’ll get you a stamp in your passport and that should bridge the time until you get your new permit. Okay, I say, how? It turns out I have to travel to Zwolle (another obscure Dutch town, I have never been before). Okay, I say, deal. A few days later I’m on my train to Zwolle, I treat myself on a cup of hot chocolate and the passing landscapes are in fact quite nice. Moreover, after an initial reconnaissance of the town, I find out that Zwolle has one of the biggest Benetton stores in the country, so I buy myself two nice warm woollen jerseys for the winter (a white one and one in chocolate brown) and the whole trip becomes a lot more acceptable with this unexpected catch. Now get the stamp.

The place is easy to find and I get seated behind a counter facing a trendy clerk in jeans and a striped T-shirt, pretty much out of place but then who said the Dutch were keen on formalities. He even fills in my form which I just as well could have been asked to fill in myself, and stamps my passport with this typical male swing. Okay, we’re done, I conclude. Not quite. His last innocent question takes me by surprise: you were not intending to travel abroad the coming months, were you?

I actually was… I have to travel to Italy in October and then again in November. Is that a problem? Well, it turns out the stamp in my passport does not allow me to leave the country, or better (worse, in fact), it doesn’t allow me to return after I once left. Now that is peculiar. I explain to him my train of thoughts: Czech citizens never needed a visa to enter the Netherlands. I could always travel freely with my passport and nobody could stop me. Moreover, on May 1 the Czech Republic joined the EU (hello!? rings any bell?!) which means I can travel double freely now and double bloody nobody can stop me.

Not quite, and here’s why: I have a regular permit to actually live and work in the Netherlands, rather than just visit it as a tourist. So I need proof of my legal residence when I enter the country, and the stamp he just gave me is not good enough for that proof. So I say, can’t you give me another stamp then, now that I travelled all the way here for pretty much nothing (nevermind my Benetton buy)? He says, the stamp you need is only valid for three months so it won’t be valid in November when you need it again. It implies I have to wait a few more weeks, calculate the dates and get the stamp just about in time to cover both my October and my November trip. Great. It all started so nice, one European family. Now you would think I am privileged by having this Dutch residence permit, but no, in practice it only gives me trouble. Why???

I think I’ll just forget this second stamp and see what happens at the airport. My Romanian friend told me the last time she travelled without a valid permit, the immigration officers just laughed and let her go. Even they, it appears, don’t have high regards of the tragically slow procedures. But maybe I change my mind and use the opportunity to visit that huge Benetton store again… :-) The Dutch European dilemma?!

Entrapment. Featuring: CASEMA

Hello fellow bloggers, It’s been ages since I last blogged! In the meantime, I have been on holiday in France (blogstories coming), and since I returned I have been chasing various authorities and service providers for their various mistakes which really are a pain in you know where. Now that my hunt is coming to an end and I’m beginning to see some signs of positive results on the horizon, I first feel the need to ventilate my frustration with all these buttheads before I proceed to the more entertaining blogstuff, and that is complaining about the silly French (no offense the French among you) and other sunny stories.

If you’re fond of modern variants of kafka-like stories, you’ll probably enjoy this. I have three stories to tell, a fine trilogy. One is about the Dutch television operator CASEMA, the second story is about the Dutch telecom KPN, and the last one is about the Dutch immigration office IND. Let me start with CASEMA, the tv provider. This story is the longest, the most terrible and the most maddening of the three. We start with the climax, so to say.

Since recently, CASEMA offers a new service: an internet connection through the tv cable. You can be online all day for a fixed (and fairly low) price per month. So when I first heard about it, I though: great! No extra cables, wires, connections, you name it. Simple and elegant. I ordered the damn thing.

It arrived and it never worked. Of our two computers, it only worked on one, and even then it sometimes had trouble getting started. To make things worse, it also disturbed the television, so we had trouble all over. Fortunately, CASEMA offered this special service of trying out the connection for two months and then cancelling without extra charges. So I thought: great. And wrote them a letter to disconnect the whole bloody thing. So far so good.

A few days later I receive a confirmation of receipt of my letter and the message is as follows: we have to post the modem with cables and all to some obscure address in Waddinxveen (even a native Dutchman probably never heard of this place), at our own cost (!), and within five days, otherwise they charge us some exorbitant sum. So I thought okay, let’s send them the whole thing and get done with it. I posted it. Exit CASEMA.

And imagine: There was even good news! The good news was that my letter came in time for them to disconnect the whole thing after one month (rather than two), so that we only had to pay that one month’s charges, while we already feared and anticipated they would charge us the full two months. Great!

Never believe there's anything like good news. A few days later I receive the invoice. The costs are: two months’ worth of charges for the internet connection AND the monthly fee is twice as much as our contract initially said! What went wrong?

Very angry, I call CASEMA. Of course it's a 0900 number with extra charges per minute and I get put on hold... for twenty minutes. Finally I get this fellow on the phone, he speaks Dutch with an accent (well, so do I, but then I don't have to help angry clients and cause them extra irritation). He admits that it's a mistake that we were charged an extra month, and we'll get our money back. But the monthly fee is correct, after all, we ordered the "multi" package. The “multi” package? Hold on.

WE DIDN'T! I remember I spoke to the woman on the phone when I first ordered this CASEMA package, and articulated "midi" very clearly. The “midi” package is designed for people who only use internet to email and do a little browsing and so, like us, while the “multi” package is for people who download movies and music and porn and I don't know what more, none of which we ever did, do or intend to start doing. Not one melody. I remember I had a whole conversation with this woman about internet habits and she knew where I stood.

AHA, says the fellow with the accent. I think I know what the problem is. I say: what is the problem then??? And he goes on to explain (it took me some time to fathom, so take your time to read): In June, when I ordered the midi package, CASEMA had two so-called promotion offers. One offer was the ‘first try out, then pay’ option, which allows you to use the internet connection for two months before (automatically) switching to a year-long subscription. That is what they meant by promising us we could cancel the whole subscription within two months at no extra cost, nevermind the expensive shipping of the modem to Waddinxveen of all places. But more importantly, the second offer was the ‘internet at a low price’ option, which gave you the opportunity to make use of the ‘multi’ package for the price of the ‘midi’ package.

But here comes the tricky bit: The two promotion offers ran parallel, but they could not be combined. So what probably happened was this: After I ordered my ‘midi’ package, the woman gave me an automatic upgrade to a ‘multi’ package (usually twice as expensive but now at the same cost), but she forgot to tell me that the ‘first try out, then pay’ option only referred to the ‘midi’ package, so once I got the upgrade, I was stuck with the multi for at least a year. Which however I didn’t know, so I cancelled the whole subscription after one month, and they automatically charged me the regular price of the ‘multi’ package. Aha, the coin is dropping.

Now that I’m finally getting the point, the fellow with the accent is probably wiping cold sweat from his forehead. He still didn’t tell me the really bad news, and it’s about to come now: they keep no record of orders made by telephone, so nobody will ever find out what it actually was that I ordered, and there is no way for me to convince them and get my money back, even though the poor fellow agrees that it was probably a mistake on their part.

Intermezzo: it is an important lesson to learn that even in an era of high-speed information transfers, it turns out to be much wiser to actually type a regular letter, post it with regular mail, get a receipt, keep it, file it in your grandmother’s chest, and be sure that this is probably the only way to keep tangible proof of whatever it is you bought. Or am I the only one who gets tricked into this kind of a situation?

What next? I plan to go on corresponding with them about any progress on the matter and file at least three complaints (three is supposed to be a lucky number, we’ll see). If I achieve anything I’ll let you know. Next time I’ll blog about the KPN blunder and the IND blunder. Not as exciting as CASEMA, but still entertaining enough for a short blog pause :-)!