Extraction 6: Selling the Car

In order to turn in my residence permit (iqama) and passport so that my final exit visa can be processed, I have to get the car registration (istmarrah) removed from my iqama. That is, I have to find a buyer who would get a new istmarrah for the car associated with his iqama.

There were some complicating factors. I need to use the car until I leave, which means the buyer would be paying for a car they couldn’t drive for at least three more weeks. While this is standard procedure around here, sometimes new hires have a hard time wrapping their brains around this.

I was getting pretty frantic a couple of weeks ago because the first couple of people who were interested in the car decided not to get it.

But I’ve learned that problems in Aramco can usually be solved if you can get the attention of the right person. Your ability to get things done is only as good as your own personal network. I ran into a friend on the way into the office one morning and he asked me how things were going. I said, not so good, I can’t sell my darned car. He said, there are some new hires in my area, send me the info and I’ll forward it. This guy, a reservoir engineer, has been here over 20 years, raised three boys here, and has wasta oozing out of his pores. It was a great stroke of luck that I ran into him and an even better boost that he so quickly offered to help. I emailed him the ad when I got into my office. And that morning not two hours later, I got a call from the perfect buyer: an expat (Canadian), wife is arriving in April so he doesn’t need the car yet, been here six months so he’s learned a bit about the strange customs in the weird bubble that is Dhahran.

He ended up offering me a little less than I wanted but it was an acceptable price given the situation. Once we shook hands on the deal and exchanged a couple of emails outlining the terms, the fun started.

In order to apply for a new istmarrah, the buyer first has to get insurance for the car in his name. This took a couple of days although fortunately he didn’t have to go off camp to do this. A couple of the insurance companies have offices in one of the outlying Aramco buildings, although this building isn’t particularly convenient for people like me and the buyer who work in the main admin area.

Then we had to turn over a pile of documents (ORIGINAL inspection report which I’d just had done in January, ORIGINAL buyer’s proof of insurance, copy of buyer’s DL, copy of DL’s iqama, copy of my iqama, and my original istmarrah) and SR 500 to Javed, the car “fixer” who works out the Arabian Auto Association (AAA, funny, right?). Javed takes this stuff to a government office somewhere and in about 24 hours returns the new istmarrah and the original documents. I think Javed is a driver for somebody but he seems to be making a reasonable amount of money taking care of car-related matters like this since very few of us want to visit Saudi government offices.

Next, I had to call my insurance company to learn what they needed so I could cancel my policy. I had to scan the new istmarrah and prepare another pile of documents that I faxed to my insurance company to request a cancellation of my insurance. I am waiting for them to email me a form which I will fill out and send back so I can get a partial refund.

Then I had to go online and initiate a request to cancel the “camp sticker” that is associated with my Aramco badge number. The camp sticker allows me to drive the car in and out of the residential part of camp. I was assigned an appointment date a couple of weeks from now but everybody knows you just drop by the Security office once you start the online process. I had to coordinate this trip with the buyer because he had to go with me. Once my sticker was officially cancelled, he had to initiate a request to add a new sticker for the same car, only on his badge now. They physically remove the sticker associated with my badge and put a new sticker in the window associated with his badge. This seems very silly since the stickers are pretty much identical and are never electronically scanned; why not just transfer the original sticker to his badge? That would make too much sense and would definitely not be the Aramco way.

It’s been more than a week since we agreed on the car deal and no money has yet changed hands. That is planned for next week, hopefully Saturday. The buyer and I will go to his bank (most inconveniently, not on camp) and he is going to withdraw the purchase price in cash, in Saudi riyals. This isn’t as much of a problem as it might sound since I am going to need a fair bit of cash, probably ten to fifteen thousand riyals, for animal shipping, paying drivers and taxis, paying the overweight charges on my shipment, and other things that I’m sure I can’t even anticipate at the moment. I’ll take the rest of the cash to the bank here on camp and electronically transfer it to one of my US accounts before I leave.

This business of selling the car is fairly typical of the way things work around here. Nothing is written down in a guide book, not for Aramcon lack of ability or interest in doing that but because rules change in the Magic Kingdom without warning or explanation. What works today may not work next week. This might sound maddening to you in the real world, but after a while, most Aramcons become rather fatalistic about this reality. Even the simplest task is made excruciatingly difficult so you plan for that. The only constant is building your network and not being shy about using it.