[Update 6] My passport may be refused by the Dutch embassy | Making progress !

Image source

For those new to this story, you can read original post and update 1, and update 2 and update 3 and update 4 and update 5 by clicking on the links for more info. Otherwise you may not understand what I'm talking about here.

What has happened since the last update I posted?

I received a reply from the lady that I sent an email for more information about 2 weeks earlier. I received her reply on Friday around 5 PM, and it said: "I have received your request, but the person on your case is .. (name) and I forwarded your email to that person." So she needed 2 weeks to let me know she wasn't on the case any longer? This pissed me off actually, but I wasn't planning on sending her an email until we had done every step we needed to do anyway. I noted this down in my documents, that she did not answer for two weeks, and now I am really curious how long this other person will take to reply to me personally. Because she did not send the email address of that new person on the case either. Seems like she likes stalling the process. Just as we are used to them handling things that can be in our favor. Because when it's in their favor they are much quicker. I asked her for a detailed document about the debt (as it is way bigger than the actual amount received) and I am quite curious what they will come up with.

Luckily we didn't bet on one horse, and my boyfriend had more luck

Because he contacted the man that emailed us while we still lived in Spain, and that man did reply last week. Ok, it also took him a while, but at least he got shit done. He send him in the early morning that he had send a request to receive the annual statements again, and only half an hour max later, it was available online. So we got what we needed. And this man was still very friendly too. Much better to communicate with, and I guess this is the man that will try to help where he can much more than the person that is on the case now. Nowhere in these documents we could find how they got to that amount of 18.5k because as we thought, the amount was much lower. And I still don't believe it can be interest. The difference is too big, and that means it should have been even higher by now, since about 9 months have passed since our last contact. But we will see what they say about that.

Luckily my boyfriend could reach the accountant on friday

And he said he needed some information to get the taxes filled in for us, so we sent this right away. He promised he would fill in everything on monday as he was now leaving for a weekend somewhere with his family. I guess this is better for us too, because now the name of his company will pop up in the tax forms, and we now know we aren't filling in a wrong amount or something, as this is his job. So he knows how to handle these things exactly. That is a pretty big stress relief for us. Once he has filled this in, he will download the proof of tax declaration that we need to send to the municipality with the year numbers of the company. And hopefully they will work with us, to clear the debt. But of course we will have to see if they will, because they haven't been very willing to cooperate at all last years. But if they won't, I guess I will have to put a lawyer on it.

For now we both have the feeling that things will work out fine

After weeks of feeling distressed continuously. Sometimes not even continuously, but in the back of our minds it was an issue. High level of stress and not sleeping well (my boyfriend) and on the other hand I was exhausted and could easily sleep through the time of day if I didn't force myself to get up. For me it works the other way around.. But either way, not a nice feeling to have. I mean the weather is good, the sun is shining every day, and because of this big thing hanging above our heads, we could not really enjoy one day of it. We just want this to be solved. I know I will be ecstatic when I finally can collect my new passport.. Hopefully this will be sooner than the maximum time I have to solve it. So we can enjoy ourselves a bit sooner.

Monday has arrived: taxes are filled in for both of the years !!

Because this debt was from a part of one year and the rest of the next book year, we had to correct both years. The accountant has kept his word, and filled this in on monday. This means that we now have proof that we don't owe them anything! They aren't going to like these documents we have sent them. And probably they will make a hassle first, that we have to go through a commission first etc, but we will see. We now did the things they asked for in the past, so if they come up with new things now, we have more proof of them trying to make our lives difficult.

Because I was so smart to wait until the last moment with filling in the appeal to the embassy

I still have 5 weeks left at this moment. While it is the 6th update already. They gave me 2 weeks after receiving the letter, which they sent by email. So I counted from that date, but when I asked for confirmation she said I had 10 more days because the mail office had told them I received the letter in the mailbox on another date. Which I never got, but in this case no problem as I knew already what was in the letter, and it turned out very convenient in this way. More time to solve things, which we needed too. While I got the email friday that another person is handling the case, I still have no response from that person! Ridiculous right? My boyfriend has sent everything to the person that sent us the documents before the weekend, and also told him that the other person did not sent an email address with her reply, and that she is not fast with responding to us. And that there's a timeframe on this. He seemed more reasonable than that lady anyway. So let's see what the next step is going to be. The ball is now in their hands...

For us it feels like a big milestone now the taxes are filled in correctly..

So even though that new contact person isn't responding (which I will make an issue of as soon as he does!) either, and it kind of feels like they switched contact persons on purpose (they have the odds against them so I can be wrong of course but the past has proven that they aren't helping a lot) so they can stall the case. Because in the letter from the ministry that the embassy send me said I needed to contact that lady. So pretty weird to switch contact persons now right? I bet they did not see it coming that we would fill in the taxes before they are even answering my question about the exact amount and specification about the full amount. They probably think this will put everything on hold, but we now have proof from the tax agency when it's filled in their system, and if they will not respond to us on time, I guess this will give us a good case against them even more than we already have. We are not done with them anyway.. We will get justice for what they have done, we talked about it a lot last weeks and we can't just leave it with this after this is solved. They took everything from us, and they admitted their mistake so we have a case.

I feel so much more relaxed now we are at this stage, that it also give me back more power to fight for setting things straight, hopefully the next update will be an even better one!