Hi all,

After so much wait (2 1/2 months) I decided to call the canton office to check the status of my renewal....only to learn that it was approved time ago but they "need to send it to the company that prints the cards, etc, etc."

I guess there is a huge bottleneck going on there. In the end, I will receive a 12 month permit, but will be able to use it for 9 months and next year i will be again 3 months without documents!

Has anyone experienced the same?
How long did a renewal take before?

Yes they are taking sooo long. A collegue got it after 2 months after it was approved , which itself took 1 month,

so I guess, you should get the card in another month..

not much we can do about it .

Sure, it can take all the time in the world!! I always got my permits within a week (two - once when we moved to CH 6 months back, and the second one from the new canton once we moved to a new one). My wife hasnt got one yet! (I am the employed one, and she is the spouse - so there is clear possibility that there is discrimination based on that!). We waited for 2 months to get the permit, then called the office. The lady said, she couldnt find the application, so my wife would have to come again and sign. She was apologetic, and also offered my wife a visa, in case she wanted to travel out of CH (which we regularly do, Germany and France are so close by, after all!). We are still waiting for the permit, it is 5 months!
This must be an exceptional case, but it can take a long time, so dont hold your breath!

Priceless.

It took 6 months for my paper version (L) to arrive last year. Been waiting 3 months now for my new B to arrive. Interestingly last week I was asked for the first time for a police report from home so will have to wait for that now too.

I think I only waited a month and a half for the card ID.

We've gone through the renewal process twice and it took 3+ months both times.

Is this actually a problem? I've never needed my ausweis for anything, so I've never cared it's taken so long.

I want to get a Swiss Franc credit, and get a drivers license, and some other projects for which i need to show or photocopy my permit.

Otherwise i really woudn't care.

I guess Zurich is not the fastest canton in CH.

Don't you travel outside Switzerland at all? For many with non-EU passports, the ausweis is the 'passport' out of Swiss...

hehe...does sound funny now that I look at it

When I came to Switzerland in 2004 I got an L and had to renew it twice with another L (will not happen to EU memebers anymore I believe...). I needed the permit for a phone connection, Internet, banking and other "formal stuff". It is a pain to chase it...

But before I came here, I lived as an foreigner in the Netherlands: It was completely common for a 12 months permit to take ten months! When I kindly asked if it makes sense, the lady at the city hall, mildly smiling, answered: You know, last month I had someone here who got it after eleven and a half months... that is normal. You can always come here and get a temporary stamp in your passport showing you are legally here... after a couple of years my wifes passport was entirely filled with Dutch stickers just because they could not make the permits within a few months...

I have experienced the same.

It has been close to 5 months and they claim that they lost my ID and asked me to resubmit.

I just did so about a month ago and still no sign of the permit yet.

Thats quite surprising coz i got my new credit card type b permit in 3 weeks adn that is before the old B permit expired actually (submitted the papers before) in Basel..

b permit:
is it true that the initial approval takes some time, and then the renewal is a 'fast' process for 2 years, but then a 'proper' renewal is done that takes really long in the 3rd year?
as luck would have it, our permits expire in January and we would like to spend sportferien in warmer climates - so i hope we will be allowed to apply in october - that will give the card making company 4 months!

If you worry about being able to travel, no problem! just get a re-entry visa at the immigration office. They give it to you "same day". The only issue is that it will cost CHF 100 per person and will be valid for 2 months or so. That sucks if you have to pay for a whole family though.

As I moved to a new flat, I also got my B permit changed to ID card shaped permit. The officials told me it would take 2 weeks. But end of the first week, I told them I need the permit for travelling. Then they called someone in somewhere else, two days later, I got my new permit. It only took 7 working days.

I think maybe smiling at the young lady in the 'wohnung kontrol' office helps.

Same thing happened to me last time too. Only they didn't tell me, it wasn't until I rang up asking what was going on that they said they seemed to have lost it and I need to come back with my passport and a new photo.

i am wondering how long things would take for a)citizens b) foreigners in your particular country eg US, UK, any in Asia, OZ etc.etc., to get any kind of official paper...from L to B in 2007 it was somewhat 3 weeks for me, but it was in november, fairly at the end of the year...

as far as i can tell in germany to get a similiar permit is about 2-8weeks.
bureaucracy is everywhere the same...

Based on lots of cases I have seen, 2 months is just the average waiting time fo permits, though depending on the cantons.

I remember when we arrived we got 'temporary' papers until our permit documents arrived - it cost 10chf per person (5 in our family) and the woman at the Gemeinde was very apologetic - she told us we didn't have to pay and get them unless we really wanted to... but for us we were just relieved to have our papers and not have to worry...