How many hoops?

How many hoops can bureaucracies make you jump through? About 3 weeks ago my car was stolen in Cape Town. I could do nothing about it for a week, since I was teaching a Java course for a new client. The police were absolutely useless: clearly no effort was going to be made to actually look for or find the car. They were simply filling in the paperwork so that I could claim the insurance money.

Upon returning home I started the hoop-jumping... The insurance company need the car to be deregistered by the registration authorities. Can't be done. According to their records, the car is still owned by the bank. The car was fully-paid-for over 10 years ago! The registration people need the original registration certificate and a letter from the bank saying that the car is paid-for.

So: start trying to get the needed documents out of the bank. For a start the address they have for me is 10 years and two house-moves out of date. Why is this so? I have dutifully notified The Bank of every address change. The answer, as I am sure you already know, dear reader, is that The Bank is not one company, but a fat, hairy, dysfunctional, multiglomerate mudball. Just because I notify The Bank of an address change does not mean that The Bank's Credit Card Division, nor their Home Loan Division, nor their Vehicle Finance Division, nor any part of The Bank gets to know of this outside the actual Bank Branch you deal with. Funny: to me they all look the same; their letters and statements all come with the same letterhead; they all appear to me (the Dumb Customer Schmuck) to be One Organisation. Just another Theory vs Reality reality.

To cut a (two-week!) long story short, I eventually got the registration certificate out of the bank, nad their letter saying that the car has been paid-for. Toddle over to the municipality with the application for deregistration, only to be told, "You can't deregister this car. You are not the owner (the bank!) You first have to change ownership."

"OK. Give me the Change of Ownership Form."

While completing the form I am filled with a strong sense of the surreal. I mean, here I am, copying various identification numbers about the car from the registration form, which was printed by the licensing department's computer where the details are stored. And I'm copying them onto a form that I'm about to hand in to the licensing department, where they are going to re-capture those same details back into the self-same computer system! So that we can fill in another form, copying those same details, to put back into the same computer system to say that the car no longer exists (in some official sense.)

Anyway, after all the copying, the lady behind the counter captures the form, only to tell me, "I'm sorry, we can't change the ownership of the car because itstagged as a stolen vehicle."

Well, hell, YES! That's why I'm there trying to deregister the damn car!

I must have looked quite wilted at that point, because the normally-unsympathetic supervisor lady took pity on me. "Give me the forms, and I'll phone [Registration Central] and get them to untag it so that we can change the ownership, and then they can re-tag it as a stolen car. It might take a few hours; I usually have difficulty getting through to them..."

Kudos to Mrs Kapp of Knysna Municipality, though! She finally got the whole mess sorted out in under 30 minutes.

Now remind me again: Why were we all (officials included) fighting this stupid computer system? Makes me ashamed to tell people that I;m a software designer by trade.

Oh, and just in case you think the hoop-jumping is finished, don't hold your breath! We have now only got as far as submitting the paperwork to the insurance company. Wait for their hoops, coming soon!