lost carte de sejour

[yeehoo]

I recently lost my carte de sejour. This is the second time so i know the first step is to go to the police and get a form filled out declaring the loss. Trouble is after waiting about an hour while no one even came out to the front desk, the lady refused to give me the form. Said it was only for french and that i needed to go to the prefecture. I tried to explain that the prefecture demanded a declaration from the police but she was absolutely not going to listen.

Anyway i'd like to find the official statement on the official website stating that i need to get the declaration from the police but am having trouble finding it. If anyone can help me there, i'd much appreciate it.

If i can find it i'll go armed with that and a letter from my director at the lab here and see if that doesn't work. I really don't know what else to do other than to go every day until i happen on to someone who knows what they're doing. Seems like the last time this happened it was no problem - but i think my girlfriend (french) was with me and also we declared it as stolen rather than lost.

Sad thing was too, i was hoping that perhaps someone had turned it in to the cops somewhere (minus the cash, of course) - but that lady wasn't going to be bothered with checking into it. Rude right from the start. Service publique, what a joke. It's more like emmerdemente publique.

Also, i'm starting to get really fed up with this kind of treatment from these bureaucrats - does anyone know of anyway to report this kind of rude, incompetent service?

[yeehoo]

Okay, i did manage to find it and the cop was right, sort of. In the case of a lost carte de sejour you can just declare and sign it a paper yourself, you don't need the gendarmes. Would have been nice if she'd been a little less rude (same for the guy ahead of me in line) and also maybe could have checked if it had been turned in somewhere, but ...

anyway, here's the link:

http://www.guyane.pref.gouv.fr/demar.../Duplicata.pdf

[frogblogger]

Originally Posted by yeehoo

Also, i'm starting to get really fed up with this kind of treatment from these bureaucrats - does anyone know of anyway to report this kind of rude, incompetent service?

If there was a channel for reporting bureaucratic rudeness, you would have to employ a million more bureaucrats to process the complaints

[Bevdeforges]

Originally Posted by frogblogger

If there was a channel for reporting bureaucratic rudeness, you would have to employ a million more bureaucrats to process the complaints

Touché!

For most instances of loss of either your carte de séjour or your carte d'identité (for those of us who are French), you either get the police form (but only if you are declaring it stolen!) or you hand write an "attestation sur honneur" that you really did lose it and you have made an effort to try and find it.

By declaring it "stolen" at the police station, you make more work for the cops, and they don't like that.

As far as turning it in, normally there is a "lost and found department" somewhere in the préfecture. But never ever assume that any department in government (and here I mean any government - not just the French) ever communicates with any other department.

Life is simply too short to worry about rude French fonctionnaires! The term is redundant, anyhow - they go to a special school to learn how to be that way (and also how to strike).
Cheers,
Bev

[yeehoo]

So just to continue the story. So i found some info telling me i could just write my own declaration and others saying i needed to do a declaration with the police that i'd lost my carte de sejour.

So that weird rude lady cop had refused to do a declaration for me and my carte de sejour is almost expired so i just decided to wait and go to the prefecture after the date that i can renew it (which will be monday) and just see what happens. Well in the meantime i went to the lost and found office in Nice (bureau d'objets trouvé) and they didn't have it. Decided then i should go to Villefranche and Eze also since i lost it during a bike ride while passing those places.

So i go to the gendarme in villefranche - lady was very nice and looked it up to see if they had it (oddly, something the rude lady in Nice didn't do), then she told me to also try the police municipale. So i went over there and they didn't have it either and asked if i'd done a declaration. I told her the lady had refused it. They thought that was totally bizarre and said her reasons were totally wrong, there was no reason to not do a declaration.

So anyway after i left she called over to the gendarme and then called me to tell me to go over there. Went over there and they did a declaration for me with the official cop stamp and all. I feel a lot better going to the prefecture with an official declaration in hand. I mean i'm sure things would have worked out eventually the other way but the fewer the trips to the prefecture the better. Life's too short, as they say.