On being half the way there

Living between places is an interesting experience.

This fall, I'm working in Stockholm, Sweden, while my home remains in Trondheim, Norway.

Most of the time, it works fine, but occasionally, things just weird me out.... such as this week, when I wanted to pay for my gym membership.

First some background:

• I live in Norway, but work in Sweden. Which means that I have to pay tax in Sweden.
• Normally, Swedish authorities keep track of people by "personnumber" - the YYMMDD of your birthdate + a 4-digit serial number.
• A "personnummer" is only given to people who live in Sweden. I don't.
• So the Swedish authorities have said they won't give me a regular Swedish personnumber, they'll give me a "Samordningsnummer" - just like a personnumber, but they add 60 to the day of my birth, just to be different.

So far, so good - my bank allows me to create an account using that, my payroll authorities accept that for paying taxes, and so on. All is well.

Then I go down to the gym at Sats Zenit, sign up for a year's membership, and sign the papers that will allow them to deduct the monthly fee from my account.

No can do.

It turns out that their autogiro system (not the bank's, not the authorities', but the gym's) requires both a bank account number and a personnumber in order to deduct money.

And they won't accept my "samordningsnummer".

Not a big deal. I can afford to just pay the year's fees. But somehow, this little episode brought home to me that the way I currently live, I'm indeed between places - not all the way there.

And the world isn't quite used to people doing that.

Efaktura - how not to do it

My bank has this wonderful feature called "efaktura" - where a company can send me its bill through the bank, I can click it and approve it - all without a single paper being harmed, seemingly to the benefit of all.
But when I logged on to my bank today, I had 6 "eFaktura" waiting, and I quailed.

Why?

Because of what it entails.....

1. Click the "eFaktura" button. Get a list.
2. Click the name of the payee. This brings up a popup with the actual bill; checking what you're billed for is usually a good idea.
3. Click the triangle next to the payee and choose "approve". This brings up a window where I can (among other things) choose which account to pay from. So far, so good.
4. Click "Approve". Get an error message because the payment date is in the past.
5. Experiment with the calendar widget until you get to choose "tomorrow". ("ASAP" and "Today" are not options.) Hit "Approve" again.
   
6. Wait for the Java applet to start. This brings you a review.
   
7. Hit "Next".
8. Enter your password. (You may also be asked for your ID number and one-time password; the choice seems to be random.)
9. Get to the "confirmation" screen. There's no link going back to the list of "eFaktura", so you have to go back to "start" and find the "eFaktura" button again.

Oh, and remember to close the popup window.

This is stupid. If I could loop through 2-5 for all my "eFaktura", and then go through 6-9 once, like I do for my regular bills, I would be less disgusted. If the error message for "The payment date is in the past" showed a button for "pay ASAP", I'd feel that the person designing this MIGHT have thought about the user.

As it is, I'm unhappy.