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| London, United Kingdom |  Review on June 6, 2015: |
Mellylamelle
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
Writing about spouse's interview, which took place on June 3, 2015. He arrived at just after 7am, as the letter we received said his interview was for 8:30am. There were about 20 other people there when he arrived. At about 7:30, security staff began sorting people into various queues. At this time, my husband was told to come back at 12:30pm. "They sent you an email about it," he was told. No, they did not - both my husband and I checked and neither one of us received an email about an interview time change. I was aware that it seemed most people were having their visa interviews at 12:30 but you're obviously going to turn up at the time indicated on your interview letter, aren't you?
This caused us a great deal of stress because while the security staff did say my husband was on the list of visitors for the day, they could not confirm for certain whether or not his interview was at 12:30pm. We were both worried that if he left, he would lose his appointment. After much effort I managed to reach a person in the US Embassy by phone. The person I spoke to was nice but clearly aiming to get me off the phone as quickly as possible. She said that all visa appointments had been changed to 12:30pm but that there was "a glitch" in getting out the second letter in some cases, and that if my husband was on the list he should be fine.
We booked a room via air bnb in central London for the night before the interview in order to be there in plenty of time for the appointment - a totally unnecessary expense given the interview time had changed!
This also meant my husband had to sort leaving his luggage at his accommodation after checkout time, and because it was a private room he had to agree to waiting until 6pm to get his luggage back.
Back to the interview: my husband returned at 11am because he had noplace to go. After waiting about an hour, he was this time let in to the embassy. Because he was so early he was second in the queue for immigration visas. Document check was fine, interview was extremely easy. They asked why he didn't do the interview in Abu Dhabi, where we have been living for 3.5 years. (Answer: we tried for 4.5 months to move the interview to AD to no avail.) They asked who "Erik" was, twice. (Answer: our joint sponsor.) I don't know if they asked anything else but as my husband and I have been together for 13 years it was all quite easy in that regard.
So, all in all a very easy interview but I can't give a high mark because the lack of informing about the interview time change caused us a great deal of stress on the day.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #16997