British Consultate accepted my application but missed it was urgent!

September 20, 2010 8:17 PM

The British Consulate Visa Section in LA today COMPLETELY MISSED the fact my visa application was entitled to priority service from UK-Worldbridge Service despite the priority service notice being the first thing they would have seen upon opening the envelope. My university in Birmingham has been extremely bad at getting documents to me and I start in a week and a half. Is there any way I can notify the consulate that I have made a priority service application and so it should be treated as such?
posted by parmanparman to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

UGH, I am so sorry to hear this. My UKBA Visa nightmare was also through the LA dept. I feel your pain. Unfortunately, as you probably know, the only way to contact them is through the WorldBridge service. By phone it's $12 per call and $3 per minute, including all the minutes on hold. Their email service has a 1-2 day turnaround and they don't respond to anything further after their first reply (in my experience).

I would call a couple Visa expediting services and see if they can step in - or at the very least, give you some advice and show you the way down from utter panic. It worked for me. It should be free to talk to them and explain your situation, asking how they might help. After that, it may start costing you. Not to scare you, but I spent over $2000, all tolled, getting my Visa situation sorted out. But I'm here and looking back, I see that there was no other way.

Can you specify which documents you're missing? I/We might be able to give you some tips about getting those things in creative ways (I went on a calling spree and learned a lot about the process). Depending on where you are, where all the necessary documents are, and how much money you can throw at this, it might be advisable to get some couriers/friends/family in on the effort. If you can though, you're best to send everything to the UKBA in one envelope/from one source. A somewhat helpful thing is that the time-zone difference is on your side.

Good luck and keep us posted. Feel free to drop me an email, too. Also, when you get this sorted out, a meetup is in order and we'll laugh about this over some gluten-free drinks (you're not alone on that one either).
posted by iamkimiam at 12:21 AM on September 21, 2010

Sorry, maybe I misread. Do you still need some documents from Birmingham? Either way, if they're not already in the loop, they should be - despite their slowness in getting docs to you. This probably happens a lot and there's likely a week or so grace period - as long as they know about why you're not there!
posted by iamkimiam at 12:25 AM on September 21, 2010

Response by poster: I am not missing any documents that I know of. I got expediting from worldbridge and marked the envelope as such. I got an e-mail from the LA visa office that essentially said I saw a regular application, completely ignoring the fact I paid for expedited service. Do you think worldbridge could actually tell the visa office I paid for the faster service?
posted by parmanparman at 12:38 AM on September 21, 2010

I think it's worth a shot, but I'd start with contacting Worldbridge by email first, since it's free. And I'd do it by end of day, UK time.
posted by iamkimiam at 5:03 AM on September 21, 2010

Response by poster: Got my visa!
posted by parmanparman at 6:44 PM on September 29, 2010