Newly married Sadhana from London was about to go to Hungary on her honeymoon when her visa never came in time. In fact, she received it only after three months. The newsweekly has learned that many members of the community are facing delays in receiving or even getting a visa slot at VFS because of their backlog. Now Sadhana, who has missed her visit to Hungary and has been granted a visa to the country three months later, might possibly face issues in getting another visa if she doesn’t visit Hungary in the said time period for which her visa has been granted. We asked members of the community if any of them had faced a similar issue.
A surprise visit with more surprises
Prateek Jayant told Asian Voice, “I wanted to visit Italy and started to find visa slots in the month of January this year and somehow got a slot in March. I appeared for the appointment with my family in the London centre and submitted my application. I was told I would get a decision within 15 days. However, I waited more than 2 months and didn't get any notification from VFS about passport collection. I called customer service and tried to reach them by email and got the same response that my visa is under process and they have no idea how long it would take. Finally, after waiting more than two months, I decided to randomly show up at the centre and ask them what was going on. To my surprise, I found out there that my passport had been ready for collection for the last two months and the visa was granted within 5 days! I was so annoyed that I filed a complaint and after waiting more than 1 month got a very generic response from them saying they don’t know what happened and they can't do anything. Every time I used to send a message they would reply back after 1 month. But I didn’t budge and after fighting for more than 3 months they finally agreed to refund my £5 SMS alert fees! I was utterly disappointed and scared to go in business with them again.”
Black market
Molay Bhadra told the newsweekly, “I think this is a chronic illness created by some and suffered by a lot many people starting in last winter and it continued. Somewhere the tap was closed so you won't get any visa biometric appointment slot at all. But on the contrary, it was always available in the black market via some agencies. Many others, including me, did plan a trip to the EU zone this summer and during late winter/early summer after some soul-searching, I gave up. This situation has been created for no apparent reason or explanation. Someone, somewhere is making the money out of it. Exactly one year from now I am planning to visit Paris Olympics and thinking how to approach the situation from now on. Last year I went to watch the football world cup in Doha, Qatar and I have seen how they completely bypassed this visa & immigration system for football fans visiting Qatar. Not sure what will happen next year.”
Limited availability of appointment slots has resulted in a backlog
In a statement to the newsweekly, a VFS spokesperson said, “Post-covid there has been a surge in travel demand globally and consequently global visa applications submitted for some countries are at higher volumes than ever before. This increase in demand for visa application appointments coupled with the limited availability of appointment slots has resulted in a backlog. VFS Global manages the non-judgmental and administrative tasks related to applications for visa, passport, and consular services for its client governments, enabling those governments to focus entirely on the critical assessment task.
“For the client governments we serve, visa appointments are available online on a first-come first-serve basis as per the directives of the client governments. Appointments are free of cost and can only be booked via our website www.vfsglobal.com. Decisions on visa applications, including the availability of appointment slots and the timelines to process them, are at the sole discretion of the respective governments we serve and may vary from one government to another.”
While Indians living in the UK with Indian passports need Schengen visas to visit mainland Europe, not all visas can be applied through VFS. In a recent update, it has been reported that British folks travelling to Europe will have to share health information and have their faces and fingerprints scanned next summer under new rules introduced by Brussels. Under the EU Entry/Exit System, holidaymakers will be expected to reveal health conditions and details of their trips before being granted entry permits.
Other conditions for receiving a visa under the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (Etias) include sharing information about criminal records, the purpose of travel and the location of your first night's stay. It's feared the new entry requirements will cause hours-long queues at Britain's air, ferry and rail ports, the Mail On Sunday reported.
