Two-year struggle with the RSI

NO ONE knows why I’m dealing with a Régime Social des Indépendants office in the Somme. I’ve never, ever, been there. My life is, and my business was, conducted almost exclusively in Nice, hundreds of kilometres away.

The Amiens office certainly doesn’t know, but won’t let this stop it from billing me nearly two years after I closed down my business (in Nice). My case number is 16 digits long; a number large enough to account for all the business that have and will ever be created, but possibly not adequate to contain the number of problem cases caused by France’s most unpopular bureaucratic body, the RSI.

For two years, this office has continued to bill me, apologise, then bill me again, as if the process is led by an amnesiac vindictive HP printer.

At one point my debt ran to €14,000 cotisation on no earnings for a closed business. "You don’t have to pay that," they advised, and on this at least we both agreed.

Proof of radiation has been sent; two copies each in two separate recorded letters. The printer forgot again. "Could you fax them?" Once my derisive snort at using a technology that had gone the way of VHS had finished, I gave it a shot.

"Did you get the fax?" "We can’t tell you for another four days, when the person that deals with the fax is back in the office." A call four days later revealed that eight pages had been lost.

The pôle juridique, the RSI ombudsman with whom I lodged a complaint in a fit of frustration, has concluded it is the fault of the Amiens office, but has nothing more to add.

I expect the bills will just continue and, as has happened to at least one Frenchman, the RSI will even deliver them to my grave.

On a positive note, when I first arrived in France, this sort of issue would intimidate me, as I was both terrible at French and terrified of getting something wrong here.

I am now well practised in complaining, both verbally and on paper. I can fire off a lettre recommandée online in 30 minutes, once I have stopped shouting.

So, when the Gers commune of Condom billed me €600 for a local tax linked to building permission (I rent, in Nice), my retort was swift. I have the RSI to thank for that.

Peter Hawkins