The Visa Saga

The overseas holiday was somewhat delayed thanks to the British Visa application office.  Upon an initial investigation, a spouse (Mandy) of a British National (Mark) was entitled to a visa that allowed him/her to work in the UK. However, somewhere along the way, these rules were changed and a spouse can no longer receive such a visa.

The only visa we could really apply for was a settlement visa, which we soon discovered could take up to 12 weeks to process....not the three weeks we had originally anticipated.  This could have potentially delayed the trip by up 6 weeks.  Many people swore that it would be over sooner...but that was not to be....

Phoning the embassy is nothing short of frustrating, a $2.75 a minute call to a disgruntled employee with little information beyond a name.  They were not even able to confirm an email address on the application, without putting through a request and asking for us to call back!

After the full 12 weeks, another $10 phone call revealed that I was now entitled to request a progress report on the application - the first acknowledgement we'd received to date.  We were asked to call back after another 2 days....only to be

told that the status was "decision pending" with no indication of timelines! 

To add to our frustration, we were also advised that if the visa application was rejected, we would be required to apply for a tourist visa, which would take a minimum of four weeks!!!

Distraught, we put a one-week timeline on a decision before we would simply withdraw our application altogether and just go.  We booked a holiday to QLD to take our minds off things, vowing to forget about that whole thing for a while. 

Whilst researching a holiday destination online however, we checked our emails to discover that an email had been sent requesting our original marriage certificate, giving us seven days to deliver it before our application was thrown out!!!  We then had to run around contacting family to follow through on our behalf.

The result.....we finally received notification of our success and will be departing the country on Thursday 21 August.

FINALLY!!