We got the Schengen visas! I went to work on Thursday morning and N went to the Italian Consulate. He collected both of our passports and they each sport a shiny silver Schengen sticker. They are so pretty! So that’s Italy, Spain and Mallorca sorted. I must say again how impressed I am with the Italian Consulate. What a pleasure it was to experience such a quick, slick and polished visa application.
The Easter long weekend then threw a slight spanner in to the visa acquisition works, since all embassies joyfully seize the opportunity not to process visas on public holidays. (How unreasonable…) My contractor’s brain works differently, however, and I went in to work on Good Friday in an attempt to minimize the public holiday induced disruption to my salary cheque. Sat and Sunday were spent attempting to pack. I am now extremely antsy about how much I still have to do. On Monday, though, I quashed the antsy feeling with astonishing ease and took myself off to climb for the afternoon. I’m sure I will regret it later, but at the time I had a lot of fun. N and I also spent some of the weekend internetting and trying to find cheap accommodation in Italy. We booked a car for our time in Mallorca and Spain. (Two different cars, obviously. It’s rather a challenge to drive to Mallorca.) We have justified this gross extravagance by rationalizing that it is possible to sleep in a car.
On the Tuesday following the long weekend, I began to sort through the UK visa forms and requirements. What a performance. What a contrast to the Italian experience. The UK visa related websites are not quick, slick or polished. There are three possible websites on which to confuse yourselves. And confuse yourselves indeed you will. There is the website for the British Consulate. There is the UK Border Agency website. There is the Visa Facilitation Services website. Each website attempts to tell you about the UK visa requirements in the most convoluted fashion possible. Each of the three websites refers the increasingly annoyed reader to one of the other websites. In the IT world we have a phrase for unnecessarily convoluted code. “Spaghetti code.” The information on these websites is spaghetti information. After a couple of determines goes at it, I managed to figure out that I must not apply for a DATV and that I will not qualify for a TWOV. (The authors of the atrocious UK visa application process are inordinately fond of four letter acronyms. I had some witty retorts all lined up, filled with my own four letter combinations, but I bit my tongue because it is likely to get me bounced from the UK quicker than a nine year old from a nightclub.) A lengthy trawl through the spaghetti info left me desperate enough to apply for a ‘general visitor’ visa and simply cough up the R995. Ouch. I rejected the plan when I envisioned paying this small fortune, only to be told that I do not qualify as a general visitor and need to fill in a transit visa application. I think at that stage I might have launched myself at the visa official and landed myself a ten year UK ban.
At last, convinced that applying for a ‘visitor in transit’ visa was the correct thing to do, I reached for the application form. It was such a relief to finally have some certainty. It was at that point that my real woes began.
The application forms for a UK visa are tedious. On average, they are ten pages long. They demand to know (apart from the usual visa gumph) who your mummy and daddy are and when and where they are born. They would like a list of every country that you have visited for the last ten years and the applicable dates. (Sorry for you if you holiday a lot.) They would like your last passport to prove it. Apart from your normal proof of employment and salary, they would like proof of your supplemental income. This means that you should submit a copy of your contract of lease if you derive income from property (etc etc.) At this point, let me remind you that a visitor in transit is allowed to be in the UK for less than 48 hours. What do they think I am going to do in those 48 hours? Swan into Harrods and offer to purchase the business? They would like to know that you are a fit and proper person to enter the UK. To this end they ask you whether you have any criminal convictions. No. Ever sidelined as a terrorist? No. Committed war crimes? No. Genocide? Oh well, there was the small incident concerning the last of the Pygmies, but apart from that…
They stop just short of asking when you had your last bowel movement.
What I find particularly cute is their faith in terrorists, war criminals and genocidists. Um, genoceticists. Um, geneticists. Whatever – those inclined to wipe out an entire population group. Anyway, they are possessed of a touching faith that someone might rape, murder, torture, maim or kill innocent people, but won’t lie on their visa application form. “Uh oh. I signed that! I could get into trouble if I lie!!!”
No really – what is the point of these questions? Quite clearly, anyone who has committed any of these acts is going to lie through his pointed teeth on his visa application form. (In the unlikely event that he is stupid enough to be filling one in in the first place.)
At least I had a chuckle or two while I filled out the application form.
Then there is the payment issue. The price of 6 hours in the UK is R656. I think this is expensive, but that's not the worst part. The worst part of paying is the lack of choice as to how you can pay. Despite the fact that our banking system is one of the most advanced and secure in the world, no EFT’s are allowed. No personal cheques - fair enough, given the levels of cheque fraud. No credit card facilities - understandable, given the surcharge inflicted on all cc transactions. No cash – sure – a robbery risk. Manual deposit? For sure! Except that the only place you can pay at is a designated Nedbank branch. I mean “the” designated Nedbank branch. There is one designated Nedbank branch in Cape Town. One. In the middle of town. It opens at 9. By the time you have gone there and made your payment, it will be late in the morning and the VFS queue will be ferocious. I am normally at work by 7. It ends up being a bit expensive to take all this time off work. So I was left with the only remaining option. A bank guaranteed cheque. Not the kind of thing you can acquire on the internet. So I had to take time off work anyway. Off to good old Std Bank. A bank cheque is expensive. R55, to be exact. Luckily, on my banking package I get one “free” per month. However it still cost me an hour’s worth of salary to go and fetch it. Unimpressed.
My next trial by fire involved the VFS call centre. You see the British High Commission does not handle visa applications in person. They contract the service out to Visa Facilitation Services. VFS is a third party company and they are responsible for one of the convoluted websites. Having scoured the websites and earned a lot of information the hard way, I still had a question or two that I could not find an answer to. I needed to speak to a consultant. Ha. Consultant. Ha! The Clueless Call Centre, I dubbed them. I called. I was subjected to the second worst phone menu I have ever encountered (Vodacom, if you must know.) I ran up my cell phone bill while a recording wittered on about the endless options, all of which information could be found (if you looked hard enough) on one of the websites. Eventually I was given the option to speak to a consultant. Gleefully, I pressed 8. I was number four in the queue. I hung on for almost ten minutes before I was “next” in the queue. Then they cut me off. I called back. They cut me off. And a third time.
In a frightful temper, I phoned the British High Commission visa phone line. Don’t bother. It connects you to yet another recording which tells you that South Africans need a visa to travel to the UK and then it recommends that you contact VFS. My spirit almost broken, I phoned the VFS call centre for the fourth time. I was fourth in the queue. Again.
Imagine my delight when they decided that they had toyed with me enough and I was finally connected to a VFS consultant. Woo hoo! My prayers answered! Hang on a minute. He sounded Spanish. Or Italian. Or something. But not South African. Certainly not British. He didn’t know anything about SA. Or the UK. Or about visas.
Me: Hi. I have a question about a ten year UK visa. My boyfriend has one. He wants to double check exactly how long he can be in the UK for.
“Consultant”: Yeeeees…..
Me: Well, the validity of the visa is ten years. The length of stay is 180 days.
“Consultant”: Length of stay? What do you mean, length of stay?
Me: Um, the length of stay is how long he can be in the country for.
“Consultant”: (sounding incredibly uncertain) Ohhhhh….. Um. Ok. 180 days?
Me: Yes. How does this 180 days work? Is it 180 days per visit? Per year? Once every ten years?
“Consultant”: Oh! Yes! Its 180 days per six months! So he can be in the country for 180 days out of every six months!
Me: Um. Possibly not. 180 days is six months.
“Consultant”: Oh. Um. Hold on.
After a somewhat protracted absence, he told me it was 180 days out of every year.
I am not sure how much I trust anything the call centre tells me. They seem to be casual staff who don’t know much at all about the visa process. This would also explain the answer to my email about where I could pay. The VFS call centre replied that I could pay at any Nedbank branch, which is patently incorrect. Be careful when you deal with the call centre. They are not as clued up as they should be. It is possible that you will receive incorrect information, and this might result in a big waste of your time.
Unlike the Italian Consulate, you can’t make an appointment for the UK visa application. You just arrive and queue. The VFS building is no 47 Strand Street in Cape Town, which is close to the Long Street Kentucky. They open at 07:00. I would recommend going early. I got there at 06:45. The nice thing about getting there early is that parking is plentiful when it is still dark. I got a space right outside the front door. I was feeling incredibly smug, until I discovered 19 people in front of me at the VFS office door. Fortunately the process was relatively quick once we were inside. An efficient security man gave us each a number as we walked in. Some of the 19 earlier birds were there to collect and not to apply so I ended up number 11 in line. We had to fill in our names on a list and then we were called up by number to hand in our documents. Some peoples’ documents were checked before they got to the counter. Mine weren’t. I still don’t know why. After handing over my forms, photos and cheque, I sat in a queue to have my finger prints and another photo taken and then I was done. From the moment the doors opened until I left, the whole thing took 40 minutes. I scurried in to work at 08:00. Not too bad! I did feel sorry for the old couple who had driven all the way from George to apply. All that way for a 4 day transit through the UK.
The VFS people gave me a receipt and informed me that I can track my application’s progress online and it will be between 5 and 10 working days before it is ready.
I will be watching it every day with beady eyes. I am hoping for a pleasant surprise - here’s hoping it comes through quicker than anticipated.
