Fun with bureaucracy, part the first

All expats have stories about bureaucracy in Italy, right? And an expat-living-in-Italy blog wouldn't be complete without one, right? Well, no need to worry any longer. Requisite Italian bureaucracy story, part the first, below.

"Si, buongiorno, vorrei cambiare l'intestazione delle bollette dell'internet," I say brightly. I have just mumbled this sentence to myself a few times to work out all the kinks (do you see all those double L's? Not so simple to pronounce, you know, especially in conjunction with the R of 'internet').

The fact that I get the whole thing out succesfully puts me in a good mood and I smile into the phone, despite the fact that, really, I am meant to be annoyed. All I'm trying to do is change the name on our internet bill from my ex-flatmate's to mine, and make it so that we get the bill by mail rather than having it be automatically deducted from her bank account. Okay, so, maybe it's a little complicated, but we filled out a form and faxed it in.

Last June.

Now it is mid-October (or was, when this all took place).

"Un attimo," says the other guy. I am clutching the paper with my information on it in one hand and pressing the receiver to my ear with the other, as if that will help me understand the guy. Half of my brain is thinking 'please don't let him have a weird accent, like from Puglia or something'. The other half is reciting my codice fiscale to itself.

Italian bureaucracy, I am so ready for you.

"Si, let me put you through to the commercial department," says the man on the other end. A crappy, tinny-sounding version of Vivaldi starts up. I sigh and put the paper with my codice fiscale on it back on the table, flexing my fingers. I roll my eyes across the room at the secretary, who is playing solitaire on the computer. Sometimes we are very productive, mid-morning on a Thursday. And sometimes not. She smiles encouragingly.

"Pronto, Michele speaking, come posso aiutarLa?"

I spring back up to the ready, and repeat my spiel. It is getting better with practice. Excellent.

"Ah, si?" says Michele, not sounding particularly interested, "why do you want to do that?"

The explanation is tricky, and I am hesitant to give it, because the more I talk, the more likely they are to figure out that I am a foreigner. This gave us problems with ENEL (the electricity people). But whatever. I do the best I can ("well, then my flatmate went off to spend a year somewhere else on a job placement and I decided to stay in Reggio even though I was really supposed to go back to America so what I really want is for us to have some electricity/internet/gas/water/etc. in the apartment, and...").

"You should send a fax," comments Michele absently.

"Yes, I know. We have," I tell him. "However, if you look at the bills for September and October, you'll notice they've still been taken from [flatmate's name]'s bank account." I give him the account number and the code thingy from the bottom of the bill, impressing myself with my ability to say numbers. (I can count! Yay! Uh.... anyway.)

"Hm. Let me put you through to customer service," he says, apparently having had enough of my reading numbers to him. I kind of vaguely feel like customer service is where I was before, but whatever. I check my email with Vivaldi jingling along in the background.

"Pronto, this is Antonella, how can I help you?"

I am getting so good at this that I don't even take my eyes off my email while I give her the spiel.

"Oh, you should talk to the commercial department for that," she says. "Let me put you through."

I frown at my email. Wasn't I just talking to Michele in the...?

"Hello, this is Francesco in the commercial department, what can I do for you? ... Yes, let me put you through to accounts."

"Wait, but I-"

I go through three or four more departments, interspersed with recommendations to send a fax, before some kind soul finally takes pity on me and emails me a document to send the fax again.

I painstakingly fill it out.

They need a photocopy of my passport, which I forget to bring to school for the ensuing week, until one weekend we come back from a trip to Paris and it happens to still be in my purse. Happy coincidence.

I politely ask our secretary to send the fax for me, as I do not know how to operate the fax machine.

"Still fixing that thing with Tiscali, huh?" she comments.

Indeed.

Also, the fax machine doesn't work. The people in the office across the hall (who are sometimes friendly and helpful and let us use their fax machine and/or steal their wireless connection) are not there.

Three weeks later, there is another happy coincidence and I remember about sending the fax during one of the rare moments when the machine is working.

I feel very productive and happy. Surely from now on, our internet will work swimmingly (not true) and the bills will come to our house (I have yet to see one) and then we will pay them at the post office (in theory) and the world will be a happy place.

"Ciao, Cri!" says my ex-flatmate one day when she calls.

"Ciao!" I say, "how's life?"

We chat for a few moments.

"Hey, by the way, do you know why they're still getting the internet out from my bank account?"

What?

No.

I explain that I sent the fax (again) and spent a whole morning on the phone with the people from Tiscali, but apparently it has not resolved the problem. Which means that I get to spend another morning on the phone with the people from Tiscali tomorrow.

Yay.

On the bright side, I have my codice fiscale totally memorized now.