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| London, United Kingdom |  Review on December 18, 2008: |
villaspurs
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
Okay here's my lengthy (really lengthy!) review...
We showed up at 8:20-ish for our 9:00 interview, and had no problems in line--in fact, they were letting people with 9:30 interview times wait. My confirmation email seemed fine (good thing, especially since we STILL haven't received the official letter!) and we got through no problem. We went through the security area and discovered that I had forgotten to take my American cell phone out of my bag, which was super annoying (we had left the UK mobiles and other electronics across the street at our hotel). Spurs went in while I ran the phone back, and they were great about letting me back in.
Unfortunately, since we didn't have the official letter, the guy giving out numbers at the front gave us a 2000-level number (for E-visas) instead of a 5000-level (for immigrants). We didn't think twice about it until 2 hours later when we finally got called up to one of the small number windows (as others have said on here, you sit in the main waiting room with windows numbered 1-11). The nice woman at the window said we had been given the wrong number, so we had to go back and get a 5000-level one. That set us back to the end of the line, which was really frustrating. Eventually our 5000-level number was called and we met with a very nice Englishman named John. As we've heard before, he seemed REALLY impressed with our organization--we knew exactly where each form was and had the copies ready to go. We chatted while Spurs paid our visa fee, and I told him about the number debacle. He said it had been crazy in there all day and apologized for our wait time, explaining that they'd had problems with the system and were understaffed (seriously--it was PACKED in there all day, and 5000-level immigrant visas were taking forever). He said he'd bump us up a bit on the list for the interview.
Apparently he meant it, because about 30 minutes later we were called to the interview window. The gentleman had Spurs swear to tell the truth and fill out a form where he had to write my name and affirm his intent to marry me. He then asked questions of us both--where did we meet, where are we going to live, etc. Then voila! we were done, except for having to wait for the "regular" immigrant visa interviewer to come over to fix a computer issue. It turns out, this guy (who was great) is not usually on immigrant cases--I guess that because they were so backed up they had opened another window for interviews. It was super easy, and he was really wonderful.
We asked about the visa delivery time and if we could just come pick it up later that day, and the answer was a resounding no. We didn't ask this of the SMS person, though, so he/she might have a different answer. We paid a bit extra for before 10:00 AM delivery, and we just got a text saying it will be delivered tomorrow (two days after the interview). Woo hoo!
For those of you looking for a really conveniently-located hotel, we both loved the Millennium Hotel: Mayfair. It's right across from the embassy--literally a one-minute walk--and you can extend check-out to 1:00 PM for no additional charge, so you can leave your valuables in there. It's normally pretty expensive, but we got a same-day internet deal that made it really affordable (surprisingly so). We were so nervous on the morning of our interview, so being able to not have to be concerned at all with getting there was great.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #3728