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| London, United Kingdom |  Review on January 23, 2014: |
Illiria
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
My appointment was at 8:30 but I arrived at 7:30 so I could be in before then.
I had taken my mom with me so I didn’t have to use the pharmacy to leave stuff and as going to the US will mean that I miss her 60th I thought I would treat her to a couple of days in London afterwards as an early birthday present.
Well where to start, getting in was easy. Some people hadn't read their interview letter which clearly says that you can't take in phones, some tried to argue with the poor woman telling them by saying 'I will just put it away in my bag'javascript:emoticon(' ')
Once in the people at the desk were really nice and the boards, once turned on were easy to see from anywhere in the room. However they did take a long time to get them working after they said they would and in the meantime the tannoy would cut out whenever the new number should have been displayed on the screen so that only half the message was heard. javascript:emoticon(' ')
I was called up to the first step at 8:30. I had dreaded cashier 1; I can see why she is considered rude. She is professionally mannered without being courteous. Though when I was called up she had disappeared and returned after 5 minutes with no word of apology for keeping me waiting. She then came back with my file and appeared to pick something up off the floor. She then disappeared without saying anything making me think that there was something wrong with my file. Nope, she had just knocked something over under her desk and was proceeding to tidy up without telling me it wasn’t my documents and without apologising for the wait.
However this was not the worst. She put holes in my certified copy of my long birth certificate. javascript:emoticon(' ') When I questioned this she claimed it was not the original but a photocopy. When I pointed to the copy which is a different paper thickness and has a clear band of white at the bottom showing it is a different colour paper she said 'Oh I thought it was a copy because the printing looked so poor it didn’t look real' No apology or anything, when I pointed out that it was a certified copy from the main registry she said that I had handed the original and copy wrong to her so it had gotten mixed up. As if it was my fault she had put it on the wrong pile. I pointed out that most people don’t have the long form given at birth and the government and the London embassy points you to get the certified copy from central registry so she should be used to it being like that not the original form. Still no apology for having ruined it, just a ‘oh well get a new one and you should get it from where your birth was registered not the central records’, just because that's what she did for her daughter. Once more tried to point out that I used links provided by the embassy website as if you don’t it can lead to problems but she claimed that you don’t have to and that it was fine not to in future.
At this point really not impressed, asked her to make sure that she did not do this to my original copy of my Canadian police report, which I needed after having lived there for more than 12 months, as it had taken 6 months to get due to not being in Canada when I requested it. She acted like it was a real inconvenience when I wanted to check she had the right one about to be hole punched and when I told her how long it took she said that others had not had that much trouble. I pointed out this was as they paid a third party more money to have it done digitally and that you had to send them a copy of the birth certificate which I was unwilling to do. At this she relented and let me check.javascript:emoticon(' ')
Anyway, I had all the required documents plus copies of everything in case so she told me to sit down and wait for the number to be called again. This was at about 9:00. Based on the reports here I thought I would be in for an hour or so wait for the next interview but it cant have been more than 10 minutes before my number was called again.
Talk about night and day. The gentleman I had at window 15 was so polite and welcoming. He greeted me and asked how I was. Then asked me how we had met and how we came to be engaged. I explained how we met and that we had been talking about getting married before he got the job offer in the states. He sounded surprised and said ‘oh so he is a dual national’. I smiled and said yes. Most of the time they just think he has lived here as an American. He asked about Vancouver and why we had gone there, I explained about his job and that we move for that. He asked me what my fiancé did now. He then asked me what I do and I explained that the most recent job I had made moving with my fiancé easier.
He then told me that my application had been approved javascript:emoticon(' ')and explained what would happen now, he emphasised that the packet that you shouldn’t open should have do not open on it and advised that some people had done so recently and they had been turned away at the border. He then asked if I had any questions and I said no so he congratulated me and said ‘have a good day’
It’s it at this point I lost my cool, proceeded to walk the wrong way and had to return to him and ask which was the way out. javascript:emoticon(' ')
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #13695