Now I'm Worried

[Queen Jenn 0]

Ok, after reading Zee's post about the phone records. My SO and I mostly talk on the phone. I have the phone logs showing the date and time of the call, the length of the call and the phone numbers used.

I send him greeting cards through snail mail. We occasionally send e-cards. We RARELY email.

Has anybody who has gone through Lagos had a problem with phone calls being their primary form of communication?

[*JG* 2]

Not Lagos....We went through Jamaica. Andre and I ONLY communicated through phone calls and the greeting cards I made and tried to mail him one a day. He took a whole box of those cards to the embassy. They were so overwhelmed, they didn't even look at them.

[Zee Bee 61]

Sorry about that Jenn

Here is our situation. We had my itinerary from when I saw him in 2007, pictures (20), 28 pages of e-mails, a month worth of chat records (about 74 pages because that is all I was going to print), our text message logs (6 months worth) and the phone logs (6 months worth). That was what we had and the CO said that our evidence was overwhelming.

Honestly we think that bringing the letters is just an excuse to issue the visa at a later date since we are not planning to use it right away. All we have are about 10 letters between us and receipts from packages we sent each other. That had better be enough.

It is possible that this particular CO was being picky as well. Who knows?

But remember, we went through Ghana.

[Ta Ta 1]

I see a pattern here somewhere. In LL's case through Liberia , his medical was " lost " according to that embassy...........it seemed they were

dragging it out for some unknown excuse. LL if you read this please post your thoughts, but didn't they stall somehow, basically approved him but then did a last minute home investigation and then it made sense as to why they stalled ?

In Zee's case there should be no excuse to stall and just say not enough letters so the visa can be issued later, none whatsoever.

I also often read about visa printing machines being " down" or they are "out of ink " or the printing guy " didn't make it to work"............

.........I wonder what lies behing those lame excuses with these consulates and what are they doing at the last minute after the interview, that they

come up with these crazy excuses.

It is really very frustrating.

[We_Destiny 1]

Jenn, We had like 300 or more pictures (hey we are both picture crazy, ok,ok vain), 5 or 6 months worth of Pingo phone records, I even sent 200 or so phone cards ( I know they say you should not), we had only 1 UPS from him to me. we both had 3 passport stamps to Ghana and hotel reservations in his name, and my 2 stamps to Nigeria and no more than 8 email between the 2 of us. Even though he would flash me, I would pick his call once a week or so (oops), therefore, I sent my Tmobile records with his incoming calls to me. We talked on the phone atleast 5 times a day what the hell would we email about; and snail mail I have been waiting 3 weeks for a card from his relative, 3 weeks (what tha).

[ara 0]

Jenn, We had like 300 or more pictures (hey we are both picture crazy, ok,ok vain), 5 or 6 months worth of Pingo phone records, I even sent 200 or so phone cards ( I know they say you should not), we had only 1 UPS from him to me. we both had 3 passport stamps to Ghana and hotel reservations in his name, and my 2 stamps to Nigeria and no more than 8 email between the 2 of us. Even though he would flash me, I would pick his call once a week or so (oops), therefore, I sent my Tmobile records with his incoming calls to me. We talked on the phone atleast 5 times a day what the hell would we email about; and snail mail I have been waiting 3 weeks for a card from his relative, 3 weeks (what tha).

We just had phone records as well as most of our evidence. I had outrageous phone bills before I got hip to Pingo and we never emailed each other a think we had just a few and like 5 im chat logs but all our evidence came from our phone logs.

[LovinLiberia 0]

I see a pattern here somewhere. In LL's case through Liberia , his medical was " lost " according to that embassy...........it seemed they were

dragging it out for some unknown excuse. LL if you read this please post your thoughts, but didn't they stall somehow, basically approved him but then did a last minute home investigation and then it made sense as to why they stalled ?

In Zee's case there should be no excuse to stall and just say not enough letters so the visa can be issued later, none whatsoever.

I also often read about visa printing machines being " down" or they are "out of ink " or the printing guy " didn't make it to work"............

.........I wonder what lies behing those lame excuses with these consulates and what are they doing at the last minute after the interview, that they

come up with these crazy excuses.

It is really very frustrating.

Yes, that is right, Omoba. In my own case through Liberia...I sent a 7lb binder with a year worth of phone/text message records (pingo and T-mobile combined), a year worth of emails and yahoo messenger chats ( I grabbed a few from each month-even a few argument ones) and webcam photos, 20-30 photos, moneygram receipts to show that we had both sent money to each other occasionally, and every other piece of evidence....I even did a search in our own email boxes to show how many over all emails we had sent to each other.

Our interview turned out to be just like Zee's. Everything was fine, the CO laughed, and wanted to see phone records, chats, EVERYTHING. She ended up keeping the binder and telling my husband that everything was fine, but his medical was lost and he would be approved once they got the medical. She gave him another return date a month later to let us straighten out the medical issue. Well, the next week I get a call from the embassy asking me questions and telling me they were looking for my husband's current location because they were planning to do a field investigation. That passed and went very well...the return date came, they somehow magically found his "lost medical", returned my beloved 7lb binder, and told him to come back in 3 days for the visa.

Funny thing is that AFTER my husband arrived, we found out that the field investigator was a best friend my husband's uncle in New York. One day he called us and the guy who did our field investigation happened to be sitting next to him (he came to NY for a 2 month vacation) and he let me speak to him. Of course I grilled the heck out of him with questions about WHY we went through this extra one month delay yadda yadda. He reluctantly told me that they never lost his medical at all and it was an excuse to delay us in order to do the field investigation. He said the two reasons we were investigated were because:

1. We had scrambled to get all of our paperwork at the last minute because my husband's important documents( passport, birth certificate, Driver's license, etc...had all been left in a taxi accidentally one day) had gotten lost. I had even gotten a new job and my house deeds recently. He said that everything had recent dates and that made them suspicious so they wanted to verify the documents.

2. Basically, a continuation of number 1...we had sooo much evidence on top of having so many recent documents that it appeared that we were trying hard to cover "something" up so they wanted more time to go through each email and chat log for themselves.

He swore that those were the factors that lead to OUR investigation. At the same time, many other people who were going through Nigeria and Ghana were given excuses to come back again and again due to visa machine issues, etc. We all speculated, but we didn't have proof.

Sorry to swerve the topic into field investigations because I'm not trying to scare you. I'm not sure, but I don't think they are that common. In the end, I do believe more evidence is better than not enough and phone records still do carry some weight as supporting evidence. Many people have been told to come back with more phone records for not having enough of them so I wouldn't worry about using them. Sorry this is so long, but our case got kinda complicated in the month between the interview/visa...

[Zee Bee 61]

That is some very good information LovinLiberia. In our case, the CO returned everything but kept the pictures.

[Queen Jenn 0]

Thanks for all the replies. That just STINKS that they purposely delay cases. Zee, I'm soo sorry that you have to wait until June. BUT, I'm sure you'll get it and the best things are worth waiting for!!!

[LovinLiberia 0]

That is some very good information LovinLiberia. In our case, the CO returned everything but kept the pictures.

Thanks. Ugh, my typos are irking me. Another thing... if you two know that everything is genuine in your relationship, then just know that you will get that visa even if they try to delay you. In the end, they will have no choice but to see it for what it is and approve that visa. This whole process is one of the most stressful things any of us might go through, but it will all be worth it in the end.