"I Don't Want to Sit in a Typing Centre" — the Third Door Nobody Named

"I don't want to sit in a typing centre."

A quick word before we start.

This is filing support, not legal advice. Ejaries.ae is a private service. It is not a government website, and it is not affiliated with the Dubai Land Department or with RERA.

You can always register your ejaries yourself — through the Dubai REST app or at a trustee centre. The official fee on the app is 177 dirhams and 50 fils. Our service fee is 299 dirhams plus VAT.

The certificate is always issued by RERA. We prepare and check your file and follow it through. We do not issue the certificate, and we cannot guarantee an approval or a timing.

Most people think there are two ways to register an ejaries. The app, or a typing centre. The app is free-ish and self-serve. The typing centre is a place you drive to, where someone does it for you across a counter, for a service fee on top of the government charge.

And a lot of people, when they do not want the app, assume the typing centre is their only other option. So they picture the drive. The parking. The queue. The ticket number. The waiting room with the television on too loud. The afternoon gone.

And they sigh. Not because they mind paying for help. Because the help, as they understand it, comes with a journey attached.

The third door nobody named

Here is the reframe for today, and it is the one that ties this whole series together. We are not really the app's rival. We are the typing centre's.

Think about what a typing centre actually gives you. Not self-service. Assistance. A person who takes your documents, checks them, and files the case for you. You are not doing it yourself at a typing centre. Someone is doing it for you. That is the entire point of going.

That is what we do too. The only thing we remove is the counter. You do not drive anywhere. You do not queue. You do not take a number and wait for it to be called. You open a page, you upload your documents, you pay by link, and the same assisted filing happens — remotely, from wherever you happen to be sitting. Assisted like a typing centre. Remote like nothing else. Same help, minus the trip.

Why the visit was the real cost

For a great many people, the government fee was never the problem. The visit was.

The person who works the same hours the centre is open, and would have to take time off to sit in one. The parent who cannot spare an afternoon, or a child's nap, or the school run. The person without an easy way to get there. The person who simply values their time more than the price of a service. For all of them, remove the visit and you remove the whole objection. The thing they were avoiding was never the assistance. It was the commute to reach it.

A typing centre also charges a service fee above the government charge — roughly in the region people are already used to paying to be assisted in person. We sit in that same world of assisted filing. The difference is that ours comes to you, through a screen, on your schedule, at whatever hour suits you rather than whatever hour the counter is open.

What stays exactly the same

And to be clear, the important things do not change. This is a change of venue, not a change of substance.

The documents required are the same. Tenancy contract, title deed, the tenant's passport and Emirates ID, the landlord's identification, and the extra items where a case calls for them. We are not asking for less, and we are not cutting a corner. We are asking for the same file a counter would ask for.

The system is the same. It is the RERA ejaries system underneath, either way. The route in changes. The destination does not. The certificate is the same, issued by RERA. We do not change what an ejaries is. We change how you get to one — and specifically, whether you have to leave the house to do it.

What you actually do, start to finish

Because the no-counter idea can sound vague, here is what it looks like in practice, so it stops being an abstraction.

You open a page in your browser. You tell us which situation matches your tenancy. You upload the documents you already have. You pay by link. We check the file, come back to you if anything is missing, and file it once it is right. Then we send you the certificate when it issues. That is the whole shape of it, and none of it required a car, a queue, or a working day rearranged around opening hours.

The counter did all of those same steps. It just made you present for them, on its schedule, in its building. We do them on yours, wherever you are sitting, at whatever hour you finally have ten minutes to spare.

The honest comparison

The self-service app remains the cheapest route at 177 dirhams and 50 fils, if you are willing to do it yourself. That is always true, and we will always say it first.

Between the two assisted routes, a typing centre asks you to come in. We do not. Our fee is 299 dirhams plus VAT, and what it buys, over a centre, is that you never leave where you are sitting.

If you would genuinely rather do it in person — if you like a counter, a face, a receipt handed across a desk — a typing centre is a perfectly good choice, and we will not pretend otherwise. If the visit was the thing you were dreading, that is precisely the thing we deleted.

Next time, we turn to a case that comes up constantly, and that both the app and your own account handle badly. Doing this for someone else. Filing on behalf of a relative, an employee, or a landlord — properly.

This was The Ejari Desk. I'm Stephen.