I mailed through my package with the initial forms 11 days ago, I mailed my request for an interview yesterday (both by special delivery)

I have been told they are BOTH still in the US' PO BOX...what the heck? Apparently it should have been signed for by now but just hasnt!

What should I do?

I should that upon calling them, I was told "nobody from the VISA team was around" which was great, considering i thought I'd rang the SUPER DUPER PREMIUM £1.20 AND YOUR FIRST BORN VISA SERVICE on my freaking mobile as well. All I wanted to know was "does anybody check your mail box or is it just a "when it gets full, we'll maybe take a gander" job.

Is this common? I sent both as "recorded" which was a relief, but Royal Mail thought it was odd they wouldnt check their PO BOX in two weeks.

There have been a couple of threads very similar to this one, so I'd say this seems to be the norm for the present. Dunno what's up with London at the moment, I really don't.

Mags called it, there seems to be a whole handful of people dealing with this mysterious P.O. Box that never gets checked. My fiance' and I are in the same boat and there doesn't seem to be many answers about it. We DID get a good tip from one of the boards to call the State Department instead of that rip-off helpline [they're so vague and not helpful most of the time]. The State Department didn't have MUCH more info, but they at least seemed to have some sort of information on a screen in front of them. Here's the number:

FROM U.K. - 001-202-663-1225. [It's a U.S. number] They'll have recorded messages and options, we were told to Press 1, then Press 0, then press 0 again to speak to someone. My fiance' got through and they were at least able to tell him it was in the system as being 'processed'. Maybe you'd get better feedback from them.

The 'Waiting For Packet 4" thread has some good advice/info in it as well. I found a lot of it to be helpful.

Mucho good luck and hope you get some decent feedback

Thanks,

I just read your embassy troubles thread...God, When I heard my letters were in a PO BOX, I thought "poopy" (not the actual word, obviously) and that I had sent them to a junk mail hell PO BOX and missed a trick.

It's good to know I'm in PO BOX PURGATORY with everyone else. Or not.

You're welcome. I hope you get some luck with the State Dept. line. For us it was just a relief to know they DID RECEIVE everything, even if they couldn't give us any idea of when an interview date might come.

Just gotta take those little victories as they come

You wouldnt happen to know the State Department's hours of business ROUGHLY would you?

I'm at work untill 10pm GMT, so I can call tomorrow or about 7pm EST tonight, I have my medical on monday though, so I might wait till Tuesday to call (i have to day off, go me!)

I believe they probably operate during regular business hours, though I'm not sure.

Over here we set our clocks forward already, so now there's only a four-hour time difference between the U.S. East Coast and U.K. It's a Washington D.C. number so I'd try and give them a ring earlier in the day, before the lunch hour rush time. I told my fiance to call around 9AM-10AM here, which would be 1PM-2PM U.K. time.

Hope you can get a chance

You'd think they'd list their hours of service where they list the phone numbers, but they don't, for some reason. I think they have normal business hours, Monday to Friday. Maybe your SO could give them a ring? If you can't phone them, there is an email address for "inquiries and quick, general information" usvisa@state.gov <usvisa@state.gov> . You should probably put case number in the subject line if you decide to email.

I wonder how long it'll be before the phone operators at the State Department start to get very sick of us London visa petitioners.

"I wonder how long it'll be before the phone operators at the State Department start to get very sick of us London visa petitioners. "


They can get sick all they want, we will never give up. We are a force to be reckoned with, mwa ha ha ha!

Perhaps instead of spending One TRILLION dollars on Iraq, they could bung the US embassy £10k or so and get them to hire someone to check their freaking PO BOX.

Grr how annoying!
I'm really sorry you got stuck in the PO box...I have NO idea why thats happening right now...perhaps the PO box checker is sick?

Hope it gets sorted soon

Has it occured to anyone that the mail *has* been picked up, but you haven't been notified?

Occom's razor.
Leave 'em alone & they will get to you. You won't feel better in the meantime, and you won't be able to be oh-so-proactive-feeling, but it will all get done.

(isn't it you lot who think it's us Americans who are pushy? <g>)

Actually, you have a valid point. The Royal Mail has done it's job and delivered the mail to the PO Box. When it gets picked up is nothing to do with them, they wouldn't know. The box is the property of the Embassy...NOT Royal Mail. They cannot check when the box has been emptied. Therefore, you will only ever get a PO Box delivery notification, surely?

We too have been asking about the mysterious Po.box. Having worked for the British Postal service for 12 years, the idea of a PO. Box was totally alien to me.

The fact that the post office cannot track the package, seems to me to be a security thing. When we enter our tracking number on the Royal mail site, it returns an error.

So we have decided to stop obsessing until the end of the month, just sit back and relax. See our signature timeline.

The packet 4 thread has put me in the mind to wait 49 days, once I know they have my package.


Breathe in........hold it.... breathe out. Relax now

Good point - I sent my P3 by Special Delivery, and although when I typed in the tracking number it said it had been delivered, it also said something like 'the tracking information for this item is not available'... or something.

Will see if I can find the slip and will check!

I sent mine Special Delivery but admit, I never actually checked the online thing to see if it got there....kind of defeats the object doesn't it? But it did get there (this was last September) and I think I got a packet 4 through about 10 days later.

"Actually"? !


Freaking out any earlier than 30 days from mailing in is jumping the gun, IMO.

Aren't there Express Delivery services in the UK?

Like FedEx and others?

I NEVER use the US mail for anything important. NEVER. I don't care if they are happy to send me a 'certified return' card. I don't trust the buggers.

It always seemed to me when I would suggest to Wes that he use an Express service, he acted like I was nuts. Are these services not as readily available to John Q. Public in the UK like they are in the US?

Aha - mine was similar, then - I sent off Packet 3 on a Monday, called the Embassy (not imagining for one second I'd hear anything, but thought 'what the hell!) the following Wednesday (I think), and they told me my interview date and that Packet 4 was in the post. - but I was just wondering if there was some kind of security thing that stops you getting the usual tracking info from Royal Mail... ie whether EVERYONE's Packet 3 would show up as having disappeared into this mystery PO box when they try and trace its whereabouts...?! It does seem bizarre that everyone seems to be getting this same 'PO Box' response right now - unless that's what always happens!

Hmm... they are, but I have a feeling they cost waaaaay more than even the most expensive Royal Mail service. Although I could be wrong. Special Delivery is pretty good, though - they guarantee delivery by lunchtime or 9am the next day (I think they have a same-day one now, as well) and has always (touch wood) worked fine for me. If you need something delivered NOW you'd use a courier service, but if next day is good enough, or you just want to know for definite that it got there, £4-something for Special Delivery (depending on weight, mind you) is pretty good...

I'm just giggling a little bit about how different people all approach this process. I LOVE the people who are cool cats, who can sit back after mailing in all their Packet 3 stuff and just chill without checking on it all the time. I wanna be like that!! hehe. I just imagine them lounging with a pipe and a glass of port going 'Tis out of our hands now, life must go on", hehehehe.

I admit, I'm totally getting all obsessive, so is my fiance'. We were completely different during the initial I-129F part. I didn't even check for touches or anything like that, neither did he. We were fine before the whole "Mysterious P.O. Box" thing. Now we're calling all these numbers like little nutmonkeys begging for ANY info.

I don't mind if the cool cats laugh at us, hehe. My Mom puts me in my place. I'll go to her having a dramatic moment of despair over the lack of communication and she's just like 'Honey, it's the GOVERNMENT, what did you EXPECT? A basket of fruit and a candy gram?". Ah, Moms are wise.

My husband got the PO Box story also from the Royal Mail but we were eventually able to access online "Your electronic Proof of Delivery" (might have been almost a week after delivery). The Proof of Delivery has a stamp that says "American Embassy London 28 Feb 2007 Mailroom." Feb 28 is when it was delivered by the Royal Mail so the post office box might be a fiction they use for security purposes. (Since anthrax scare in Washington DC in 2001 the US governmnet is very careful about its mail.)

Ohh - you could get your proof of delivery online - that kills my theory, then! I just found my Special Delivery slip (no idea why I still have that, it's with the copy I have of the forms & checklist) and typed the tracking number on the RM site... it's still saying the same thing it was at the time - that it 'has been delivered' but that the electronic proof of delivery is not available. Not that I care about the electronic proof of delivery now, of course!

The PO Box thing is odd, though... maybe if the RM turn up at the Embassy really early in the morning (whenever I receive something by Special Delivery, they seem to ring my doorbell at the crack of dawn!), before there's anyone there to receive mail, they stick it in a PO Box instead...? Doesn't make much sense if something has to be signed for, though...

I rang up Royal Mail (who we all know runs a VERY TIGHT SHIP indeed) and they said that it was sat in the super duper PO BOX OF DOOM and that i should contact the recipient.

Freaking out any earlier than 30 days from mailing in is jumping the gun, IMO.
[/quote]

I have to agree NOW that being too concerned in the first 30 days can be seen as jumping the gun. However all I want to know is "do they have the packet?" then I can sit back and wait 24-30-49 days as required.

A week after posting I am still getting Sorry, there has been a problem with the reference number you've entered. Please try again.[i]

I don't know what I have missed in the past few months, but I don't recall that anyone has consistantly been able to get this information you want--confirmation of delivery. Even if you had one of their people by the throat in front of you, they would tell you that they can't see your case & that it takes X weeks to get it into their system.
Clearly it works.. people are moving to the US every day. I hate to see you torture yourselves like this over something that you can not affect.

Are you packed yet?

Half packed...I wont be leaving untill august-ish anyway, but I am a stickler for wanting to know what is going on, and we want to set a date and send the invitations out!

Like Cartman for the Wii---cmon, cmmmmmmmmmmmmon!

I don't think it's so bad to be a stickler for wanting to know what's going on. In a way, I suppose it is kind of like overkill at times to check on things so often, but I come from that 'Damned if you do, damned if you don't" school of thought. I've had so many experiences when I didn't check on things and then only later realized I should have. Wanting to make sure they haven't lost stuff, and if they have I want to know as soon as I can so it's not a month or two later before I do, you know?

I just don't trust bureaucrats, especially overworked ones

Teddy, I see your medical is Monday. GOOD LUCK!

Thank You, Spurs won today with Paul Robinson scoring so I'm taking that as an omen for the best!

Peace and Love,

Teddy.

Ok then, Officially OTT! Cartman it is!

After a week of th PO. Box story, the State Dept was able to confirm that our Pkt 3 details had been received and the system had updated as we were speaking.

I just rang the state department with it now being 16 days since I sent my first part of package 3 back, they said they are still waiting on my DS-230, 156,156k, 157 and that I should resend them if I sent them over two weeks ago and they still havent got them.

Great.