We sent our I-129F packet on 27th July 2007, delivery was confirmed on 15th August (have no idea what took so long) but the postal tracking states that the packet was postmarked on 27th July so we should have beaten the fee increase deadline ruling. HOWEVER, we have had no confirmation from CSC via post or email of receipt of the application and our check has not been cashed.

Initially, I was just thinking that the delay on the NOA1 might be due to a volume of applications arriving in July/August but I am now concerned that the packet is lost in the system and there will be little we can do about it other than resending the whole thing which will subject us to applying with the new fee and setting us back a further 6 - 8 weeks.

Does anyone have similar experience or advice on where we stand with just confirmation from US Postal services that the packet was actually delivered?

Read this post from earlier, it may give you the big picture.

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=86484

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Helpful thread...frustrating though!

I guess my patience to date was based on good reasoning but I never imagined that USCIS wouldn't have foreseen an increased volume in applications and made arrangements for this until the rush died down. It would have made sense to employ some seasonal staff (perhaps students on summer vacation) to deal with July filers so that the influx would not impact on those already in the system.

Removing a check from the front of an application and assigning a case number shouldn't take so long.
I think all July filers expected a bigger delay than usual but this is a ridiculous situation if USCIS have piles of incoming revenue sitting on a truck. Not to mention how this is affecting those who have been in the system before July.

I will stretch out my patience for a little while longer.

There has been some mistakes by USCIS employees so hopefully that has been worked out and you will receive your NOA1 soon. Good luck

Plz be patient. I was about to resend the packet myself (I didn't even get delivery confirmation).
Packet was sent on 7.26 and the check was cashed on 9.06.

I get the feeling this is going to be a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng process.

Here's our experience:

Mailed/Postmarked I-129f to CSC on July 25, 2007 (along with $170 processing fee). Received postal confirmation of delivery (signature obtained) on July 27, 2007. Waited for a month for our NOA1. At the end of August we received our packet back in the mail with an NOA stating that it was being returned due to the wrong fee being attached!!! The whole petition had been taken apart by someone at the CSC and reorganized, pictured stapled together, covering letter removed and everything all put back together with an ACCO clip.

We are so pissed!!! We had the package post marked and mailed before the July 30th fee increase and we have postal confirmation that the petition arrived and was signed for before July 30th. The NOA has a receipt date of July 30th (what a surprise...sarcasm intended).

Why was the package seemingly prepared for processing if the fee was supposedly wrong? Wouldn't the whole thing have been returned to us as we originally sent it? The whole "wrong fee" thing just seems like a money grab to us. We called to ask how we can remedy the situation as we feel that we are being charged the higher fee unfairly as we followed all the rules. Also, our petition has now been unfairly delayed another 6-8 weeks. We were told that we should just re-submit the petition with the new fee because re-submitting with the old fee along with any postal delivery evidence that we have will only slow down the processing of our submission!

What a load!!!!

Ok...I'm done venting...going to re-submit our petition and hope for the best.

From the American Immigration Lawyers Association:


AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 07082862 (posted Aug. 28, 2007)

If you receive a rejected petition or application on the basis of improper fees, please do the following:

1. Verify RECEIPT and POSTMARK date.

2. If it appears to be an improvident rejection, resubmit the original application/petition to the Service Center with a brightly colored cover sheet along with proof of timely delivery/postmark stating:

ATTN: CRU SUPERVISOR - CASE IMPROPERLY REJECTED FOR FEES
Enclose a cover letter detailing what fees were enclosed and what date the case was postmarked and/or received.


Hope this helps!

Tracy you never cease to amaze me! You are a veritable wealth of information!!!

Other than the packet being completely lost in the deluge of applications, this is precisely the scenario I've been worrying about. It seems like CSC have totally underestimated the impact of the fee increase on their processing. I imagine that the staff there are incredibly overworked and are not able to take sufficient care to check that the postmarks are within the old fee ruling.

If there is, as has been reported, a semi-truck full of applications waiting for processing, then we're not just looking at USCIS workers doing their usual initial checks...they're having to sort July applications from August ones before the packets can even be opened.

My application wasn't received by CSC until 15th August so I'm preparing myself for a similar response from them as you received.

I'm so sorry it has happened to you and I hope you return to this forum and note Tracy's advice before re-submitting your application. Good luck.