NVC Appointment letter not accepted at 3rd Country Posts

[Used to be broken 147]

My husband had a terrible time getting his VISA to go to Warsaw Poland. The interview was rescheduled because the Consular employees at the Polish Embassy in Minsk Belarus refused to recognize the NVC Interview Appointment letter that was emailed and he needs a VISA to enter Poland. (no trouble on previous tourist VISA) The Warsaw embassy quickly emailed an "old school" appointment letter that the Polish Consular employees should recognize and be familiar with however they then asked to see the envelope it came in. While he was standing in line he saw other people having the same problem.

US Embassy employees at customer service telephone number in Warsaw said they would not call on his behalf or Fax invitation letter to Polish Consulate. The also said he could not go to US Embassy in Minsk Belarus to have them authenticate the invitation letter.

Unable to make the first interview it was rescheduled from June 8th to July 15. The Warsaw embassy said they would mail him a hard copy of invitation letter to his home address in Minsk. They emailed me a notice stating it was mailed June 8th. The new date for his VISA appointment with the Polish Consulate was June 22. No letter arrived in time for the ten days processing the Polish Consulate requires to issue a travel VISA to a Belarus Citizen. A week and a half later the invite letter finally arrived on July 8th with a July 1st postmark from Warsaw.

I had requested NVC months before schedule him in Moscow and they refused. They said I had to prove "why" he could not go to Poland. I just wanted it to go smoothly for him.

Turn the page, I called DOS Ombudsman and requested the case be transferred to Moscow as he needs no VISA and this is a waiver case so he will have multiple trips to the Embassy. The procedure requires the IBC at the transfer Consulate to 'accept' the case so that was a concern. (what if they said no?) I heard two days later via email that the case was being transferred and was accepted by the Moscow consular office. Today I got an email

from Warsaw saying the case was transferred and will take approximately 6-8 weeks to get to Moscow.

In between I got an email from someone in Warsaw that said they called the Polish Consular Chief in Minsk on his behalf and he needed only to show up at the VISA window to process his paperwork for a VISA ! No name for this person so not sure how helpful this would have been.

Now the question becomes who changes the case number? Should I call NVC to make sure they send an electronic copy of the file to Warsaw? Was the original file sent electronically or the hard copy file? Can they work off the electronic copy and will having it in Moscow sooner speed up the new interview date?

Edited July 17, 2010 by brokenfamily