Pipmeister

SO I had a couple of questions that I posed on here and people were a little unsure. SO I rang the help line (and for a fee of $18.. I was on the call about 10 minutes, 4 of which was waiting) and I was given some answers.

One of these was about my wife's passport - its still in her previous married name as we haven't travelled outside of the US in the past 6 years. Given that we had to get the visa application in FAST, we tried to get her passport changed through the expedited root but was told that was only for emergency travel, and the normal root would take 4 weeks.

The advice I was given by the helpline was to apply in Wife's new married name, but submit the old passport with an note.

Application Support Center, when they saw the passport, and the note, and the application form said... "Noooooooo, no no no. you can't do that. You have to apply in the name in the current passport" (which I always thought would be the case).

What worries me is that the helpline also told me I could count the money in my Flexible Savings Mortgage (off-set) towards the Savings root. I'm wondering now whether my wife's whole application is based on flawed information and will be rejected!!!

I think if the UK Immigration Service are going to outsource the helpline and charge you for the service, they should staff these call lines with people who are actually experts. Because at about $120hr charge, they can clearly afford to!

Pipmeister

Opps.. sorry should have posted this in the Passports sub-forum

Pollyana

Its ok, I moved it

alfista1

Their email help is just as bad.

They respond but just send me links to the original documents I had questions about, and sometimes the wrong links as if they had not read my question!!

Totally useless.

Pipmeister

That I can understand (not right, but I expect it)- but when you charged for a service....

Pearlgirl

I've emailed them, too, and the response is mostly a form letter with the associated links back to gov.uk. I finally had to call them the other day, and did find out yesterday that the Sheffield office said I was missing a document. I would have never known if I had not called!

And, to make matters worse, the Sheffield office had sent me an email on April 2, but it went into my spam folder! Plus, the document I had to fill out had confusing information and typos! But, thank goodness, they let me fill out the form, make a PDF, and email it to them. Fingers crossed, but I think I'm missing my cruise

Backstory (lol): My Brit hubby just retired and we're moving back to West Sussex. We more than meet the financial requirements, and I have no dastardly deeds in my past. We took a chance on booking a 2-week cruise after selling our house to get ourselves to the UK. Since I first sent in my application in February, we thought the end of April would be doable (but still bought cruise insurance - thank Thor!). But due to the bank taking over 5 weeks to get us 6-months of account history and the Sheffield spam stuff, it looks like we'll be flying.

My only advice is to do whatever you need to do to insure everything is moving along. Once you turn in your documents, keep an eye on the spam/trash folder in your email account!