Have spent too much time this past week battling the bureaucracy inherent in American life. A visit to the Air and Space Museum will be required to remind me that this is the same country that put man on the moon! Part of our problem is the lack of a social security number. This is ingrained in every financial transaction and part of your credit rating. Quite different from the privacy inherent in our tax file number in that regard, but has a similar government function from what I can tell.
In hindsight, I should have applied for a social security number as soon as we arrived. Having it now would simplify things a lot. Anyway, we went down on Tuesday afternoon thinking the crowd would have gone. Wrong! Two Aussie girls told me they had been waiting three hours and best best would be to get there before they open in the morning. So was there on Thursday morning at 8.35, waiting 25 minutes as number six in line for them to open, got my ticket and sat down to wait for 15 minutes, and then took 5 minutes for their officer to key in my completed form and details from my passport. I now have a receipt which should mean I get a number in two weeks time. See what happens!
I then went into battle to open accounts for electricity, gas, water and telco services into our rented Maryland home. Remember here that accounts for all but telco services go directly to the Embassy who pays them on my behalf so risk is negligible for the providers. Embassy advice is that I should just have to turn up with my passport to get the accounts opened.
Couldn't get through computerised phone registration or online registration for electricity without a social security number. Managed to slip under their guard on that one using a dummy social security number on their website registration that hopefully I remembered correctly from the one that the bank used to open our account a couple of weeks ago. Stay tuned to see if I end up getting burnt on that one!
Turns out that I can't get the water account into my name until I can get a meter reading so have yet to engage in that battle.
The fun one has been the gas guys. Got most of the way through phone registration with a real(!) person on Thursday until the social security number came up. That ended the conversation! Was told to front up to their office with two forms of photo id. So went down first thing on Friday morning. Went to NE Constitution Ave rather than NW which cost me some extra blocks looking for an office that wasn't there and then three long blocks to walk down to NW. After the usual explaining why I was there to a guy who registered me in the queue, I waited until permitted to enter the inner sanctum. This went fine for 30 seconds until I was asked for, no not a social security number, but a copy of my lease. Fortunately the conversation from the day before was recorded on the record she was looking at so I was given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to remain in the game. A copy was faxed down later so presumably this is now ok. However this episode took me two hours from home to work, two train rides and walking 25 blocks. Admittedly me going to the wrong address took some time etc, but why I couldn't have just faxed down a copy of my passport is beyond me.
This contrasts with the account I opened with Comcast to supply phone, high speed Internet for three computers and cable tv for two tvs to the house. I broached the dreaded social security number issue at the beginning of that conversation and was told that it wasn't an issue! So they are sending their guys out on Thursday to install it all, supply three cable modems and two digital set top boxes in return for a cheque for the first month's fee. Their risk seems much higher but they were so much easier to deal with. They supply the same services in our apartment plus our landlord went with them for their new house so hopefully we will be just as happy with them. Of course the hundreds of channels available on the tv cable don't include any worth watching but that's just America!
Must also admit that we managed to get Donna a local SIM card for her mobile phone today. Having a local bank account to which they can debit a monthly charge kept them happy. Not a great deal but ok and much better than the pre paid offers. Still no risk for the company as can't make calls if have no remaining credit on your account. Once your credit is down to zero, can choose to either put $15 or $25 multiples of credit on your account or wait until the automatic debit for the next month before using your phone again. Other 'tough' part of the deal in the US is that you get charged for airtime - so you pay for receiving and making calls on your mobile or cell phone! I've already put all our numbers on the 'don't call' list.
Malcolm
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