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I have a personal ov-chipkaart, I bought it yesterday and I used it today. I checked in Amsterdam and I was travelling to Utrecht. The officer checked my card and said that I didn't check in and I must pay a penalty. I have two inquiries in that.

  • I paid cash as I afraid to effect in my work permit?! Can it effect or not?!
  • I don't speak and read Dutch, what are the messages that I should get when checking in and out? I remember that machine gave me yellow message?!
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    You used a lot of exclamation marks. Just calm down. It could be unpleasant but it is nothing exceptional. It is the fact that immigration is an enormous stress for most people. I would advise you to read about how immigration affects mindset, relationship and health – Eugen Martynov Jul 27 '16 at 4:50
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    There is no relation with a work permit, whatsoever. These things aren't coupled. – user6860 Jul 27 '16 at 21:06
  • Note that uniformed personnel is always instructed to charge you first, discuss afterwards as it were. But for a genuine mistake (like checking in on the wrong machine, forgetting to check-out, etc.) you can often get your money back if you ask the customer service afterwards (one reason of this is that the customer service can see your whole history so they can make sure you are not abusing this refund facility). – Gala Aug 18 '16 at 9:16
  • @Gala thanks very much, it just was a hard situation for me as it was only my second day in Netherlands and she didn't care about that, which was like a hot welcome for me in Netherlands :) – Ahmed Ragheb Aug 18 '16 at 9:44
  • I also got help from Customer Service for failure to check out. In person, very helpful. Website, only Dutch in that section and useless. All people I dealt with spoke excellent English, which is good since as a tourist I had only learned 'thank you'. – Andrew Lazarus Aug 19 '16 at 20:39
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First of all, welcome to de Nederland!

Next time, you try to express that you just arrived and your Dutch is not sufficient that you're not sure what status was of your check in. They usually are kind people and use common sense in such questions. Don't afraid about people in uniform here, they are much less burocratic than in our home lands.

About the questions:

  1. I don't think that such small crime (if it would be crime) can trigger permit revoking. I was not able to find online circumstances for this case. So if you worried just call IND.
  2. I don't remember any yellow message while checking. Here is educational video about using ov with NS. Here is also information what to do if you forgot to chek in/out

Pay attention that on some stations GVB (Amsterdam Amstel) checkin points are together with ns, so you might checkin/checkout wrongly. Also on some NS stations are red check in points to pick up special ticket for fast train between Amsterdam and Breda (Schiphol, Rotterdam, Breda).

Small correction: GVB is the transport provider in the Amsterdam and NS is the trains provider.

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It can absolutely not effect your work permit. But unlike @EugenMartynov, I would not contact IND to make a bigger matter out of this than it already is.

Also, as a general rule about similar incidents (not just in the Netherlands):

  • If you are not taken aside/off the train and detained, not informed that you will be summoned, and not given some official document - then you are not going to charged with a criminal offense.
  • If you're not charged with a criminal offense, nor formally charged with breach of your residence conditions - your status in a given state will not be affected.
  • If you're required to pay cash on the spot for some infraction, it is extremely likely the authorities will be satisfied by this payment/fine and you will hear nothing of it in the future.

Of course, this is based on my own experience, and while that includes some litigation, it's not Dutch litigation, so YMMV.

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    @AhmedRagheb: La shukr 3la wajeb :-) – einpoklum Jul 27 '16 at 20:07

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