duztee

Someone needs to tell my local council this is the 21st Century and things have move on from pen and paper.
Just received the bill for rubbish collection, sorry that WAS rubbish collections in January, February and March.

Similar point but different subject.
Like many parts of Hungary our roads are a series of holes joined together by tarmac, which the council are happily repairing by making a patchwork quilt of little square of new tarmac. But the whole fleet of vehicles involved are all brand new! perhaps it might have been better to spend the money on the actually road than the maintenance vehicles.

Szeged

Unfortunately it is like the chicken and the egg; which came first and one cannot be without the other.........

If they buy the tarmac mixing machines and lorries, they then have no money for the tarmac! And if they can afford the tarmac, they cannot afford the tarmac mixing machines and lorries! In Szeged we have plenty of potholes between each block of flats (apartments) and on side roads, but none on the main roads; which makes the area look nice to tourists and pleases the vehicle tax payers......The same vehicle tax payers who would love to see their flat (apartment) entrance/pathways not full of potholes!

So Hungary is in a situation where they could afford the computers, but then not the staff to operate them! Hence why many things are still not 'online services' yet. Saying that, it is not all bad. Digi and EDF I can pay online (and therefore pay in the UK, etc). And I don't mind the yellow cheque and post office system as I have 3 local post offices to choose from, including the main one. I am also lucky to have Hungarian relatives (of my HU wife) in Szeged that can pay my bills when I am in the UK. Obviously it would be a better place when all services go online........https://nemzetikozmuvek.hu/ is looking like it is putting the major services online (at least EDF are on there already).

Peter_in_Hungary

Maybe I have been here too long and am getting protective about Hungary but......... the UK spends about 120million p.a. mending potholes so its not just Hungary with the problem.

Most bills can be paid either on-line to the provider with a bank card or by internet banking and a bank transfer. Where it is on-line to the provider then you can see the state of your account anytime and most are pushing e-bills to reduce costs.

Computers are cheap, often with the support of a non-refundable grant. Staff (as everywhere) are expensive, go sick, need holidays and maternity leave. IMO it is a fallacy that computers reduce the need for staff, rather they increase the amount of bureaucracy that can be done and increase the amount data that can be stored

duztee

I don't really care if they use paper or computer, the point was their tardiness in sending out the bill 3 months late.
Ok to me it is not a big bill but multiplied by the number of properties in the town this must be a significant amount of cash, which surely to a logical business mind is better earning interest in the councils bank account. Having been to the council office a number of times I can assure you there does not appear to be a shortage of staff, just the usual system of needing 5 pieces of paper for every task when one would do.

The point about the new vehicles was that they seem to have renewed the whole fleet at the same time, probably for a nice discount from Mercedes Benz, but I am sure a fleet operator would tell you it is better to renew a few vehicles each year, so perhaps then they would have more money for tarmac.

wolfi

Re the late bill for garbage collection:
It happened here in Zala county too - just got two bills, one for each quarter.
At first my wife thought that yellow strip was a mistake because we usually pay our bills on time - but I found only bills from 2017 and earlier, so it's correct - and your post proves it, thanks!

Szeged

Peter_in_Hungary

But you don't know how the financing came about. Often there is a grant that is available as a one time offer for specific items in which case it would make sense to get as much as you can. Councils rarely make big (any) capital purchases without grant aid so you would have to know the circumstances of the funding to understand the purchase rational.

PaulinEger

I used to know a Hungarian army captain and he told me about a recent (at that time) purchase by the local army of a fleet of new Opel Astras. The price paid was actually more than Joe Average would pay to buy a single car. It was all about corruption and people who knew people and pockets were lined. :/

Peter_in_Hungary

On the other hand an item from the UKs The Telegraph last November about the NHS -
" Hospitals paid between 35p and £16.47 for the same single pack of 12 rubber gloves – a 47-fold difference, the data shows. And a box of 100 plasters cost one trust £1.68, while another paid £21.76 – 13 times more."
Corruption or incompetence ??

duztee

Yes. Bad management is not confined to any one country, and of course it is easy for me to criticise when I don't have to offer a better solution.
I just thought the forum was a bit quiet and needed an argumentative subject :-)

FenTiger

IMO it's bad management. In my current job some billing tasks were transferred back to the team whose role it was in the past. It was transferred to my team due to poor management and incompetence. Since this task has been transferred back bills are going out late and impacted on our cash flow. Every month I report the latest debtor balances and according to the debtor balances report one particular LA (local authority) owes us over half a million pounds. But, alas, that is not the true picture. They have paid but the team responsible for matching the bills to the cash we have received have not done so .... they just put it in a separate account to match at a later date. In my opinion that's downright laziness. It's happening more often than I find acceptable. Also another LA overpaid us £100k and I have pointed out the error but the same team have done nothing to refund the money to the LA!

Of the fewer bills I still send out I have to ask for specific information to ensure we get paid and despite explaining a billions times what I need service managers still do not understand the importance of providing it.

Suffice to say when I pick my retirement date it will be on one of these deadline days!


Seems like it's a you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours world.

I'm signing off by saying 'Duztee for President'!

duztee

I know I said I was only starting a provocative thread 'cause the forum was quiet, but that is definitely a step to far! :-)
Thanks but that is one job I don't envy anyone, besides I am one of lifes great under-achievers so wouldn't have the drive to make a good leader.

fidobsa

One thing I was always grateful for in Hungary was that they didn't seem to use that terrible "surface dressing" method of surfacing roads. That is used extensively in UK, despite being a total waste of time and money. The potholes are still there but you can't see them or steer round them. For the last couple of months they have been doing extensive road works in Csurgo and the last time I went though there were the dreaded loose chippings on the road! I'm hoping this is just a temporary surface and they will put down proper tarmac when all the new pipes or whatever have been put in.

scot47

Immigrants should not try to tell the host country how to run things. Bad manners.

scrubbedexpat142

But the British know best, in all matters, after all they ran an Empire for years.