Dante was wrong

Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor

 

Yeah, alright, I cut and pasted that. My Spanish is limited. My mediaeval Spanish all the more so. As in I have zilch. Nada. Kahore.

But according to Dante, Arnaut Daniel, a twelfth century troubadour, thought Purgatory was nasty: “Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor.” Some dude called Arnaut Daniel was kind of keen to get out of there.

So: a pretty mean and nasty place? “I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory / And I don't like the sound of that” sang David Byrne and Natalie Merchant (of 10,000 Maniacs), channelling Dante. Yeah, nasty enough.

But what would 10,000 Maniacs or even Dante know? They haven’t sat on the phone or experienced an online Australian government form-filling session to access their superannuation.

I have.

I rang my Superannuation Mob and they told me it was easy. I just needed an Australian bank account. And to be in Australia. No worries.

Opening the bank account was easy. I sashayed into the Bendigo branch with a passport and a few dollars, chatted to a nice lady, and Bob was my uncle. Or Bill was really but that’s another story.

So off to my Superannuation Mob. Except they have no “off to” locations. 

Sigh. Off to them in pixels and electronic voices.

No sweat. Fill in this form. Answer these questions. 

Lodge.

Rejected. 

I am a pariah. Suck it up princess. Ring us to get your money. Because you’re a foreigner.

So I did. Pushed lots of buttons to explain to bots what I want. Finally got – after seeming eternities' worth excruciating music, badly recorded on a 1970s cassette recorder beneath a dung heap, a human voice. I persuade her I am who I say I am with a bevy of answers to identity questions.

Or I almost do.

Remember my telco and its 98% of Australia? Woodend is 2%, apparently. Or was it 0.02%?

Yeah, nah.

Ms Superannuation Mob can’t hear me properly. It cuts out. I try again. A different voice. It cuts out. 

I stand on the top of a red gum with my left little toe in my right ear, face 278 degrees nor-east-by-east and finally complete a conversation.

Your super? No worries. What’s your ATN? My what? My ATN. Australian Tax Number. I dunno. You have to have that. Do you have it, I ask them. Yes, they tell me. But we can’t tell you.

Pariah.

Ring the Australian Tax Office, they’ll give it to you. Good bye. Thanks for being a client. We value your custom.

(Reddit says they don’t). 

I ring the Australian Tax Office. They ask the same are you who you say you are questions. Apparently I am. They ask a dozen more questions to make sure I am really who I say I am and should have access to my money.

I can’t answer enough of them. By the time they get to my great grandmother’s bra cup size I know I am defeated. Nope, we can’t help you. You must get a Centrelink Client Number.

Easy. It’s on all the forms and cards Centrelink have issued to you.

Er … it’s been many years since I’ve dealt with Centrelink (a government department that deals with all Australian Commonwealth Services Delivery). I have some letters from them somewhere but they’re on file, back home in New Zealand.

Remember? I had to be in Australia before I  could be permitted to do all this and no I didn’t bring my 200kg filing cabinet with me.

The new faceless voice was gorgeous. Deeply apologetic. Sympathetic as I choked back tears of rage. Twenty-four questions later I had answered sufficiently well to be who I am. No bra cup size involved, though daughters’ birthdays and my dates of arrival and departure, since 1982 were. My first pet didn’t register.

Fortunately, dates are one thing that stick in my mind. They gave me a nine-digit number. I rang the Australian Tax Office again. A half hour hold, while the new person worked out why I was giving them a Centrelink Client Number.

But yes, yet again I was who I was. And they gave me an ATN because I had a CCN and now I could speak to my Superannuation Mob to get my money.

Except I couldn’t.

Because I had to fill in a whole lot of forms, print them out, get them witnessed, scan them, email them back and wait – apparently for up to three months.

To get my own *^$}x(@* money.

It wasn’t a good day. 

Two days. Friday and Saturday. Gone.

I still don’t have my money. But I have wonderful daughters.

Oh? Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor ? “Remember the pain I suffer”? Dante had no bloody idea.


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