From Qatar with love...
Hello everybody,
I am a Romanian and I arrived last week in Qatar on a business visa. I am planning to open a company here in Doha and therefore I will extend my visa for 2 month while I am doing the necessary paperwork to establish the company.
I went to obtain a temporary driving license, which by the way I didn't understand why I needed it as long as I am a foreigner, wuth an international driving license, but anyway I did it and they provided the expiry date just three weeks after the issue date, ain;t that funny? There was a guy that offered to "help me" solve this faster and he charged me 200 riyals extra, while the cost of the license itself is 150 riyals. So a very nice welcoming fraud from the first days (no invoce offered for this money).
Second thing I needed to solve was to bring my family for Christmass. That should be easy I said to myself. Wrong again. I had to ask an employee of my sponsor to get me a visa for my family. He charged me 300 US dollars for each member of my family includin my 2 month old infant, so I end up paying 1000 US dollars for my family to stay one month in Qatar. I specifically asked him if the visas will be ready in one week and he said that it will sure be, so I purchased he plane tickets for my family for about 2000 euros.
After one week I started to call and ask about the visas. Surprize! The guy took the money, went to a hotel to get me the visas, but after one week they were telling me that it will take another 4-5 days. What happened is that I lost the tickets as they were fixed dated so that will come cheaper, my 1000 US dollars is still with them and I end up celebrating Christmass and New Year's Eve alone.
Am I not lucky or is just the way things are going over here?
Sigh...:(
Why you dont ask first?
with reasonable price.
-kebab king @ al matar (in between Oasis cars and crown plaza)
-Maza @al matar (few buildings away from the suzuki dealer)
Thanks everyone for the advise!
I' ll be more careful in dealing with strangers from now on. Thanks for the tips! Hope to accommodate quickly here. I' ll keep you updated with my new experiences here. Buy the way, is there any nice restaurant that doesn't serve fast food and still has reasonable prices? I would prefer something with continental/ European food.
All the best to everyone!
Don't easily trust anyone who tells you that he can do this and that... try to research yourself...there's a lot of people who are fraud here, so be careful !
Being a resident and knowing how things work here, maybe i can share some easier ways for your immediate concerns. Pls write to me directly instead of publicly. cheers
There are lots of frauds here to make use of such emergencies. You should have got the visas done through a hotel at much lower rate and you could have used your International Driving License for the time being. The Temporary DL is issued according to the validity of your Business Visa.
As cracydutch said.. you can still bring your family here, just talk to any hotel..
just make a deal with a hotel,..spent a night there,.the get you the visit visa,.and the rest of the time you fam stays at your place