My car is getting dutch too (part II)

… so I was at the douane window and the man there was asking me for the calculation of the bpm (Private motor vehicles and motorcycle tax). He said “since January we’re not longer calculating or helping you with the calculation of the bpm, you have to do yourself”. He also suggested me to go home and buy a program from the internet to calculate it: “the calculation is very difficult and this program makes everything for you. You can come back on Monday to bring the papers…”. Then I said “but I can only drive the car today with the provisional number, right? How should I come back here on Monday?” I mean, Heerenveen is around 60km from Harlingen and the RDW is middle of nowhere!!


I called Paul, to get “Dutch help”, am I not understanding this man correctly??!! But indeed I was…

At one point I asked him “what if I make a mistake in this calculation?” and he said “well, I will have a look before sending it to Emmen and in Emmen they will check it and change it if it’s needed”. Why are we arguing then??!! It doesn’t’ matter what I write down, they will change it!! I called Paul again and he was even better than me, in the meantime he had called a Citroën dealer to know the price of my car (I had the german price list with me, but the douane man said I have to use a dutch list). The dealer also told Paul the bpm.

At the end I put these two numbers in the papers and let everything else blank and went back to the window. The man looked at the paper and asked me how I did get these numbers “easy, we spoke with a Citroën dealer”. Then he disappeared for 10 minutes and when he came back, he was holding a description of the Citroën c4 from the internet with all the characteristics and the PRICE!!! He said “I will check the car and after that you can go”. He was checking if my car had extras or some special items like air conditioning, navi, etc… at the end he said my car was a little bit more expensive than what I wrote and changed the price!!


After almost one hour I was able to leave. I was so upset! I was discussing for nothing. bureaucracy is bureaucracy everywhere, I guess…