Help needed ASAP: contacting Sydney consulate to reschedule interview

[Mostlyvoid 0]

Hi guys,

 

My wife and I are in a bit of a situation: her spousal visa interview at the Sydney consulate is in less than 24 hours. The problem is that she lives in Melbourne, and there are COVID border restrictions being put in place today. She can technically get to the interview, but she'd need to go into hotel quarantine for 14 days before returning to Melbourne. Because of pets/jobs etc, that would be a major problem.

 

She's been trying to contact the consulate to reschedule, but can't get ahold of an actual human. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.

[pingan 0]

13 minutes ago, Mostlyvoid said:

Hi guys,

 

My wife and I are in a bit of a situation: her spousal visa interview at the Sydney consulate is in less than 24 hours. The problem is that she lives in Melbourne, and there are COVID border restrictions being put in place today. She can technically get to the interview, but she'd need to go into hotel quarantine for 14 days before returning to Melbourne. Because of pets/jobs etc, that would be a major problem.

 

She's been trying to contact the consulate to reschedule, but can't get ahold of an actual human. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.

I would suggest e-mailing them at support@ustraveldocs.com as soon as possible, put your case number and perhaps the word urgent in the subject line. They typically responded within 1 business day. At least you would have a record of requesting a rescheduling in writing. As far as I know, there is no way to directly get a hold of the consulate as their calls are handled by the call centers.

Edited December 20, 2020 by pingan

[ErinB 17]

1 hour ago, pingan said:

I would suggest e-mailing them at support@ustraveldocs.com as soon as possible, put your case number and perhaps the word urgent in the subject line. They typically responded within 1 business day. At least you would have a record of requesting a rescheduling in writing. As far as I know, there is no way to directly get a hold of the consulate as their calls are handled by the call centers.

Hi! 
thanks for the response - I’m the aforementioned wife 😅

 

for anyone who may end up following this thread if they end up in a similar situation, or for my fellow Aussies in the coming weeks: 

 

i finally did get on to a human being, in a call centre as per the above poster. They have informed me of two things: 

that my email request was received and they’re forwarding my email to the relevant department.

They also informed me that if my interview isn’t rescheduled successfully and I just don’t turn up, “normally they would not continue processing your visa application”. It’s not entirely clear as to whether she meant they would cancel it altogether and we would have to start from scratch, or if they wouldn’t process our application further without us attending an interview (obviously) - and I say it’s not clear because after the above statement she also said “it would have to be rescheduled”. 
 

I’ve been told to watch my inbox for an email about my rescheduled interview, but as it was originally supposed to be at 8am tomorrow morning, if I don’t hear from them by 4pm today I’m going to have to just get on a plane and risk it. 

Edited December 21, 2020 by ErinB

[pingan 0]

46 minutes ago, ErinB said:

Hi! 
thanks for the response - I’m the aforementioned wife 😅

 

for anyone who may end up following this thread if they end up in a similar situation, or for my fellow Aussies in the coming weeks: 

 

i finally did get on to a human being, in a call centre as per the above poster. They have informed me of two things: 

that my email request was received and they’re forwarding my email to the relevant department.

They also informed me that if my interview isn’t rescheduled successfully and I just don’t turn up, “normally they would not continue processing your visa application”. It’s not entirely clear as to whether she meant they would cancel it altogether and we would have to start from scratch, or if they wouldn’t process our application further without us attending an interview (obviously) - and I say it’s not clear because after the above statement she also said “it would have to be rescheduled”. 
 

I’ve been told to watch my inbox for an email about my rescheduled interview, but as it was originally supposed to be at 8am tomorrow morning, if I don’t hear from them by 4pm today I’m going to have to just get on a plane and risk it. 

https://www.ustraveldocs.com/vn/vn-iv-reschedulevisa.asp#Reshedule My Immigrant Visa Appointment
Please note that the closing time for appointments is 48 hours.  If you cannot attend the rescheduled appointment, please cancel or reschedule your appointment at least three working days prior to your appointment date.  Otherwise, you will need to wait until the appointment date has passed to reschedule a new one.
 

these might help? 

[ErinB 17]

18 minutes ago, pingan said:

https://www.ustraveldocs.com/vn/vn-iv-reschedulevisa.asp#Reshedule My Immigrant Visa Appointment
Please note that the closing time for appointments is 48 hours.  If you cannot attend the rescheduled appointment, please cancel or reschedule your appointment at least three working days prior to your appointment date.  Otherwise, you will need to wait until the appointment date has passed to reschedule a new one.
 

these might help? 

Thank you, yes that’s very helpful. 
 

this is all well and good but we can’t exactly help that the borders were announced to be shut on a Sunday afternoon when we couldn’t inform anyone, and we were given 12 hours notice to get home. I understand we’re living in covid times but that should mean that EVERYONE has to adjust their protocols to covid times, not just the members of the community who can be bossed around whenever anyone likes, consequences be damned.  
 

I’m going to call them back now and see what I can get out of them 

[pingan 0]

5 minutes ago, ErinB said:

Thank you, yes that’s very helpful. 
 

this is all well and good but we can’t exactly help that the borders were announced to be shut on a Sunday afternoon when we couldn’t inform anyone, and we were given 12 hours notice to get home. I understand we’re living in covid times but that should mean that EVERYONE has to adjust their protocols to covid times, not just the members of the community who can be bossed around whenever anyone likes, consequences be damned.  
 

I’m going to call them back now and see what I can get out of them 

yes, I think they will be accommodating, Sydney consulate is actually very efficient and understanding based on our experience.

[Ryan H 3,813]

Moved from IR-1/CR-1 Process & Procedures to US Embassy and Consulate Discussion.

Edited December 21, 2020 by Ryan H

[Timona 4,207]

Any update on this?

[ErinB 17]

17 hours ago, Timona said:

Any update on this?

Yes! 
sorry it took us so long to update, it’s been a pretty insane 48 hours. 
 

So, what ended up happening is that after many conversations, the people I managed to get a hold of basically told me that there was no way to guarantee that my reschedule request would be received by the “correct department” and approved in time, and that although the general protocol if I didn’t turn up to the interview was to put me as a no show and have the consulate ask me to reschedule, they also couldn’t guarantee that would happen, and they couldn’t guarantee that if that were to happen I would be able to schedule our new interview for any time soon. 
 

Essentially: “might be fine, but it also might be years of work down the drain. Have fun.” 
 

We decided that we didn’t have much choice... I got on the last plane out of Melbourne, and I’m now in Sydney and stuck here indefinitely. 
 

The silver lining to that situation is that we had our visa approved pending medical! We have the 221(g) form and I’ll be attending a medical as soon as I can, depending on which state I’m allowed to be in at the time 🙃. But, we were given verbal approval by the CO who seemed very happy with everything and confirmed we were approved pending our medical.