Paying for the carte de sejour in stamps.
My new carte de sejour (French resident card) was ready for pick-up this week. This means that I'm legal for the next year. So I have to pay the yearly carte de sejour fee in stamps. Not postal stamps, but these special government stamps. I suppose they prefer you pay in stamps vs. having to deal with cash. Who knows. Anyway, as I'm waiting for my card, I immediately learn that there are different types of government stamps. And I bought the wrong ones. "Crap" was all that could come out of my mouth. I'm not sure if the prefecture lady understood what that meant but she probably understood that I was not happy. I had to figure out if a friendly Tabac would let me exchange my unused stamps for the correct ones or if I threw a good amount of money down the drain. I run over to the closest Tabac and struggle, in French, to tell the lady that I screwed up. She exchanged the stamps, no problem. Yippee.
A l'année prochaine, Préfecture!
9 comments:
That happens in Italy, too. You've been lucky to find a nice person who excanged them!
Wow - good customer service? In France no less? Mazal Tov. Now you're never going to leave! :)
This is definately good news! Congrats on the stamp issue!
So I just received that green card telling me I can go pick up my new carte vie privee et familiale... except the timbre OMI part is not checked. I don't know how much the stamps cost or which ones to buy. I'll have to go to the prefecture first anyway to see if my vie privee carte is actually there or if they made another stupid visiteur carte instead. Can I go to any tabac near the prefecture?
If it's not checked off, then you probably don't need them. Each situation might be different. Especially since I have one of the stupid visiteur carte de sejours.
Really? I thought all visiteur cards were free and you only had to pay for the right to work in France (vie privee, etudiant, salarie, etc.) My visiteur card from last summer was free. Bizarre...
There must be different types of "visiteur" because I have a long-stay visa, but my status is "visiteur".
Hello Emily,
I have received my renewal for my titre de sejour and they are also asking for 'Un timbre OMI de 70 euros'. I am heading out tomorrow morning so a quick reply would be great.
My question for you is, where do I get these timre OMI and what do I ask for? I am planning on going to a tabac and just asking for 'timbre OMI' and maybe throw in a etranger?
As I recall, last year I played stupid (as I actually am/was) and it went through without the timbre OMI.
Thanks a bunch. I will keep you up to date.
Robert - you can get the stamps at any tabac. Make sure you get the stamps that have an OMI on them. Sounds like you already know what to do. Good luck. :)
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