Story short, I want to buy a scooter. The details? I must go through hell to do so. Truth is that unfortunately the more bureaucratic a country is, the more the people try to get around procedures to achieve what they need. These going-around is not necessarily illegal, but not the right thing either.
In my case as a foreigner, to buy a scooter I need an Identity Card (Carta d’Identità), just to be a candidate to owning one. Strangely, my working visa/permit is not enough. When I finally asked a lady in the city hall why the work visa is not good enough, she said it’s because to the eyes of the Italian Government I “don’t exist”, until I get the Carta d’Identità. In other words, the working permit allows me to enter the country, work, pay taxes, etc., but it’s not proof that I am actually living in this country. Things get a bit more complicated, since in order then to get that Identity Card I must have first the Residency (Residenza), which is nothing else than providing a proof of residency, such as an rent contract, and evidently involves taking your number, sitting idle waiting for your turn, filling up paper forms, etc.
As strange as it could seem, the whole process can be avoided just by asking someone to buy the scooter for me, so legally will be his’, driven only by me. Same thing is valid for the insurance, which by the way, can cost you as much as what the vehicle will. Adding up to twisting procedures to going around things, if a person has his “Residenza” in a small town/city, the cost of insurance can come down to 50% of what it would cost for someone with a “Residenza” in a large one. One may argue correctly that the larger the city, the larger the risk of having an incident, which is absolutely true. The problem of the procedure is that the system itself allows you to register a vehicle as if you were actually living, driving in a small town and saving on the cost of insurance while you actually live in a big city.
So long story short, it makes more sense to have the scooter under a friend’s name and save the whole hassle of trying to proof that I’m actually a resident. To my defense I did tried doing the right things, but there are just to many barriers for doing so. This means especially time consumption, and the fact that I cant afford hopping from one government office to another being treated rudely, because well, I don’t have a scooter to help me go around in the first place, nor the patience to deal Italian Bureaucracy, not anymore…
