Paying Bills in Chile

We received our first chilean bill this week so we had to go pay it. Like everything in Chile it was a very interesting experience. On the back of the bill it tells you places that you have to go to pay the bill. Luckily one of these places is located in our metro station, Tobalabra. We walked up and waited in short line only to find out you can only pay with cash or check. So we got out of line found an atm withdrew cash and got back in line. Not really knowing what to do and not being able to ask, we just handed the lady the bill and some cash. A few minutes later she handed it back with a ticket stapled on it, we hope that our bill is payed.

Chase waiting in line to pay our VTR(internet/cable) Bill

Another interesting thing about paying bills in Santiago is the way we had to pay our rent. The owner of our apartment gave us her bank account number. We then had to go to her bank Itau' and find a deposit slip. This process should have taken us about 5 minutes but do to our incredible limited spanish it took about 20 minutes, which included speaking broken spanish to the customer service rep. We finally got the deposit slip filled in and once again we hoped for the best. We have not heard anything from our land lord yet, so I guess we did it right.

Apparently, our gas, electric and water bill just appears in our mail box. We have not received one yet but hopefully will get it soon. I am sure we have to go or do something else for it. I will let you know as soon as we figure it out!

On a very different note, today I got a new client name Claudia. It is extremely ironic that both of my clients are named Claudia, I am guessing it is a very popular name. She is much younger than I was expecting but very smart. I have a feeling I am going to really enjoy getting to know her. For starters she loves to travel so atleast we have something to talk about.