Dan C

We never actually checked CEAC but we got tracking information on the 3rd and it arrived at the pick-up point on Monday. Our impression was that if they take your passport during the interview you're more or less already accepted, so we had entirely shifted our focus to move planning.

WOW that's terrible! Did you pay the first three courier fees with a credit card? Might be able to charge back.
 
I kinda want to say at least they let you pay the fee but that's such a low bar.

I thought I would quickly mention that although it is highly recommended to pay on the website, a few people in my interview batch (February 1, 2022) were also unable to pay the MRV fee through the website. We were allowed to pay in cash at the consulate.

Yeah, I can imagine that it's the process and some part of management culture that is not tech-savvy. The rank-in-file are often trying to do a good job and are dedicated to help you. I have some friends in state. They all did a few years of consular visa processing as part of a required rotation. As I understand it, only a few people in DC who have a mandate in technology have the authority to spearhead system upgrading and streamlining to keep the (unfortunately bad) experience consistent across posts. However, these roles are often led by non-STEM folks who may not have the expertise to manage and supervise rollouts to the quality one might expect of a FAANG website. I imagine the canned responses from the consulate are to keep the information consistent across applicants.
 

We received a response along those lines as well, but it took 2 weeks to receive it at which point we started to e-mail the us-visa.com people who were much more responsive. 😕
 
The US visa process is definitely not run like a customer-oriented business. I can't count how much unnecessary back-and-forths and ambiguities we ran into during the process.
 

The Immigrant side. They also had us register a brand new account with a different email address.
 
I also just got an amazingly unhelpful response from the consulate that sums up to "it's the website's problem" and "you better be ready for your interview"

omg it worked
 
It seems the key thing is having them classify your Case number as K-1, rather than Immigrant.

My Packet 4 e-mail was contradictory. It says: "please be prepared to pay the following fees on the day of your interview", which contradicts the next sentence "K (fiancé/e) visas: Must pay before arriving at Consulate.  See https://ais.usvisa-info.com/en-ca/niv/information/fee for more information. (Please bring a copy of your MRV fee payment.) ". Moreover, the address shows the non-immigrant visa part of the website (/niv), which tech support later told me is the wrong section! So if tech support is right, the link a reasonable person would click on to pay there K-1 MRV fee leads to the wrong section of the website.
 
First, we tried registering with the non-immigrant part of the website, but it also did not prompt us to pay an application fee. Tech support then zeroed out the account and sent my fiancé the following e-mail:
 
Second, we tried again on the immigrant visa part of the website (/iv) using the K option. Also, there was no prompt for an MRV fee.
 
So I believe we tried every combination. There is not much one can do after that. At work, I have been involved in far more complex filings so it would be funny if something like a visa fee would be out of my reach. 🤭 🤪 Almost every consulate has a cashier to pay UCS fees and deal with basic cash services for employees. Whether they're working the day of the interview is another story.

Yeah, we're in exactly the same spot. The P4 instructions having the non-immigrant visa link got us as well. 
 
I have news though. We just got an email from the website's tech people that our case was manually changed to a K-1 visa type. The email has instructions that we need to re-register with a new account, with a new email as well. They forgot to zero out our DS-160 number though, so we haven't been able to finish. Par for the course, I guess.
Hopefully this fixes it.

no question is too silly .  i am sure many wonder the same 

My fiancé also received an e-mail indicating an interview date of "02/01/2022" in the first e-mail and upon registering the appointment, he received a second e-mail with a less ambiguous formatting, "February 1, 2022".

NOA1 :    2020-07-07
NOA2 :    2021-03-26
NVC Received :    Mid April?
 
Here's hoping Montreal works through the backlog quickly.

Thanks Stella and Julija.
 
Our biggest issue is we have a lack of photos, hence asking about affidavits. We have also a ton of trips but not a whole lot between them. We're not big photo takers, she drove almost every time she came here, and because it's Canada and the US travel insurance was included with her CC and we just didn't get passport stamps. The financial records I think will add a lot though, especially since she spent a whole summer here one year.