Photos taken and forms filled in online and printed off, all boxes ticked that needed to be done!
6 weeks to our depature date, so off the Visa aplication goes! Three week turnaround at the outside we were told, so loads of time, you would think.
2weeks later the return prepaid envelope lands on the floor, with a form highlighted where we had gone wrong, we had given the wrong photos, so mad panic and new photo's are got! as this leaves only 20 working days till we go!!
Brain wave, we think????
To speed the process up, We thought I would travel to Manchester office of VFS and hand it in person, so £40 on train tickets from Newcastle and off I go, feeling confident with all tasks on the pink highlighted form showing our first error completed.
After a fair walk and having found the place along with queuing for nearly 2hrs, I'm infront of a really rude young woman, she turned out to be, her first command was "sit"!!!! Said really sharply!
Showed her the forms and passports, she barks, your wife's has failed???? she has a different name, she is my partner,if her attention to detail is that good the she should have spotted different names on the form, I asked why (mistake it seemed to madden her) she, abruptly barks!!! picture is incorrect and the signature is not the same as the passport?? the only difference between my picture and my partner was I had an extra inch of snoulder showing if that!! I pointed out that the Hayes office had already passed her signature on the same form,as they had sent a form stating just new pictures would be all it took to process the visas, WOW! did She take offence at this statement and turned to the power she had and stated she makes the decisions and that was her final dicision so just go home get her to resign and new picture, come back tomorrow and i'll process the aplication then!
Stating it was a round trip of 500 miles, she laughed and said not my problem.
They certainly dont care about customer care.
One other woman in there had visited Goa some 10 times with her familly in 5 years but this woman behing the desk told her to, go home as she wanted to see her sons birth certificate even though he had his own passport stamped 10 time too!! YOU CANT WIN WITH THIS WOMAN at Manchester
We have since been granted visas by another company and it took 7 working days, yeah it was £17 more than VFS but so what.
VFS take liberties with you and dont care about customer care, avoid this company at all costs, we even contemplated canceling our holiday away from India, thinking if this was the way your treated we dont want to go!
But happilly we have the Visas and are looking forward to it.