Trouble reaching South African Consulate/New York

July 13, 2009 11:34 AM

Any Mefites working at the South African Consulate New York? I know it is a longshot but I have an urgent issue that needs fast resolution.

My daughter and I have been trying to reach the South African Consulate in New York since this morning (7/13/09). We get only a busy signal. My daughter is scheduled to leave on an AFS South Africa volunteer assignment on Thursday (yes this THursday) and we have been trying to resolve a problem with the visa application for three weeks without success. We have also emailed and faxed and have not received a reply.

At this point, things are quite urgent as we are about four hours from New York and obviously she can not get on the plane without her visa/passport. If any Mefites have any direct insight/help to offer we would be most grateful. Many thanks! feel free to mefimail if that works better for you.

posted by bluesky43 to Travel & Transportation (7 answers total)

Try the DC office? [phone]
posted by meta_eli at 11:43 AM on July 13, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks Meta - I thought of that and oddly, the phone number on their website gets a number not in service response.
posted by bluesky43 at 11:46 AM on July 13, 2009

I would try calling other missions and asking to be connected. List of other missions in the US here.

Also:

1) you may have to go in person to sort this out. Make plans for that contingency if it's at all possible - furthermore, it may actually be faster to go up there and pick it up than to wait on pins and needles for the mail to come.

2) you may have to call her airline and explain the situation to see if she can go standby on a following day if her stuff doesn't arrive on time. Obviously that would be an inconvenient situation, but having been in the *exact* same boat before (an embassy refused to process my visa application because they claimed it was printed on green paper...), I was able to negotiate with my airline's customer service people by calmly escalating until I got put on a flight a few days later from another city, which I drove to. I still made my trip, but it was frustrating.
posted by mdonley at 12:19 PM on July 13, 2009

Best answer: Call the South African embassy in Washington. Speak to a consular officer. Tell them their NYC consulate is MIA. Tell them you need to pick up the passport with the visa at the consulate before close of business Tuesday.

There's no excuse for this. Once someone decides to issue a visa, it takes about 15 seconds to make it happen.
posted by justcorbly at 4:14 PM on July 13, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks very much for the helpful suggestions. The comedy of errors continues however. Calling the consulate in Washington yielded an answering machine for Weinstein and Associates and yes it was the correct number and calling the visa office in Washington (a separate number) yielded first -your call can not be completed as dialed for two hours (and yes I was calling the correct number). After about two hours, I finally had a ring-through that got me to someone who said that the phones had been down the entire day so the staff "was working elsewhere". Call back tomorrow at 9:30. His only comment beyond that was that the NYC consulate had two people on vacation and might be backed up. oh really. I also tried emailing the head of the NYC consulate (in addition to the multiple emails/faxes that were never replied to that I had sent to the visa officer). The email was returned as undeliverable. I will try justcorbly's suggestion tomorrow morning as well as calling the NYC consulate again. It was helpful to know that issuing the visa is a short affair. Thanks again for your suggestions.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:15 PM on July 13, 2009

I assume this is the info you are using:
333 East 38th Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10016
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Do you live close enough to visit the consulate in person? I too have found that going in person is the best way to deal with visa issues at various consulates.
posted by billtron at 9:46 AM on July 14, 2009

Response by poster: Thank you all. Getting in touch with someone at the Washington Embassy was the trick. I reached a very helpful person who called the consulate in NYC. He called me back in less than five minutes and within 15 minutes had phone calls from three separate people from the consulate in NYC. After a LOT of confusion on their part, we were told the visa had been sent out the previous day. When it arrived sometime later (yey!) my daughter and I nearly jumped the fed-ex guy. Thanks again for your help!
posted by bluesky43 at 10:50 AM on July 16, 2009