yun L.
Wrong system
Right, I have got the visa today for my mother. But want to share my experience with people to help you to understand this company and it’s system. Applied visa mid Jan for a holiday booked end of March. Paid everything, thought should be fine with the visa as ticked all their document requirements. BUT couldn’t get an appointment slot! Checking everyday, all January were booked, thought we would wait for February slots. But soon as it’s open, it’s all booked! I thought this is not right. Also we couldn’t wait until March as by then it will be too late. So I called them and emailed them several times. I was told just keep checking. But nothing! I thought this is just not right. Surely Spain wants to have tourists? I then wrote to Spanish consulor to ask for a solution ( paper letter posted to them, marked as urgent). Then I got a call the following week and I was told manually made appointment for my mum, we could come any dates! I was given a time slot of 11:30am. Felt like won a lottery! Took my mum who is in her 70s with 2 hours travel and got there 10:45am. Wow… not until then I was told the time slot is the time to get a queue number. So by the time we got there, there were 30 people before us! I was told we needed to wait for 30 minutes. But by 11:45 there were still more than 10 people before us. My mum was tired, so I spoke to the counter people, got some sympathy, took the documents. Paid around £120 in total, visa fee, photo, special delivery for the passport and text message. I was intrigued to ask the people who were waiting in the over crowded waiting room how they got the slots. One said through agent, the other said through some other software. You need to pay extra to get the slot through the agent. So this is why the slots are all taken within number of hours after released by the company. This is totally wrong system! They shouldn’t allow the agent to take all the slots, and leaving people who apply for visa themselves in desperation! The service in the visa centre is chaotic. The girl who called me to give us the appointment appeared didn’t want to be there, when I asked her about the slot time, and the king wait. She said: I have given you the slot I can’t let you jump the queue. But what does it mean by given a 11:30 am slot? It’s not rocket science! Anyway, happy that we can go on the holiday now. But if I didn’t write the letter to the Spanish embassy, then we could be still stressed by now and waste all the money. Hope this will help you to understand this strange and wrong company/ system.