Expat Community > Ecuador

carolannemck
Joined 2008
Posts: 303

Dealing with the bureaucracy

14 years ago

Well everyone, I am happy to say our water is back on. This has been an especially frustrating week here. Some weeks are glorious, but this has not been one of them. Like Boncur says, if you live out of town or own a business you really need a car here. Both shoes fit, I own a business, and I live out of town. I own two vehicles, a small truck that was purchased 3 years ago, and a Hyundai 4x4 that I bought last April. Both of them were purchased used, so we had to go through the extensive process of registering them, which in and of itself can be a nightmare. With that said, January is time to pay your yearly fees and get a new matricula if needed. Well, the truck needed the whole nine yards, so we started the two week process to get it reregistered. Early in the process, we found that the transito still had the old owner's name in their system. Getting this rectified took several trips to Ibarra and back and forth to the local police station. With that finally accomplished, today I went to the bank to pay the fees for the Hyundai which does not need a new matricula; low and behold, my name is not in the system, but the old owner's name is still there. Well, here goes another couple of weeks of trips to Ibarra to get the situation rectified. At this point, I can't even imagine trying to bring a car from the States in and going through this process. The authorities would definitely want some paper that does not exist in Ecuador.
Carol

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