VFS issues - GWF wrong, can’t upload evidence

Hi all

I’m in a major panic. Me (British sponsor) and spouse (Japanese, applying from japan) have completed our visa4uk application, booked the biometric appointment, paid fees and got a GWF reference.

We wanted to pay for “keep passport during application” premium service so proceeded to VFS to register, pay for that and begin uploading our evidence.

Problem: when we logged into VFS, the prepopulated GWF was wrong and the “my application” option in settings was unable to find the data of our application when searching. We contacted the listed APAC email address but it has been a few days without reply. Our biometric appointment is on Monday.

I had read that others have faced a similar issue, and with no help from VFS, registers with the prepopulated GWF and informed VFS at the appointment of the error.

I registered and noted the incorrect GWF and I paid for keeping the passport option. It also made me book an appointment (for biometric???) again so I selected a Tuesday because Monday was only premium appointments.

However, now that I’ve registered, and still cannot update the GWF number, I am unable to upload the documents.

I have tried calling VFS in the UK, and the premium uk immigration and visa hotline was unable to provide me with a phone number. I plan to call the Japan VFS office but they have limited hours and may not speak English or be able to resolve what appears to be a technical issue.

Is this an option?
- instead of uploading documents, the Tokyo VFs office offers a premium Scanning service - can I create another vfs account with a different email and my spouses details, select the scanning service and then just bring both the passport keeping and scanning service receipt to the appointment we booked on Monday?

- the documents we have prepared are all colour scans of the evidence. Can my spouse simply print these out and bring them to the VFS centre for scanning or do they need originals?

We have got to this stage and so far there has been no mention from visa4uk or vfs about how we could post the evidence if we wanted to - if we did, again, is printed photocopies okay or do they need some originals?

Sorry for the wall of text - thank you for reading if made it this far!

Currently facing the exact same issue. Funny thing is that when I register myself on their website as a new unrelated email address and same applicant name, it assigns a new random gwf number each time. No idea how to get it fixed. I emailed vfs and those idiots told me to contact the premium home office line. And I have been trying to call that line but have not had the time to wait hours to speak to someone. Will try again today, but I suspect I will also get in the endless loop of finger pointing without any results.

May just go to vfs london office and ask them.

a_sid02 wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 14, 2019 7:40 am

Currently facing the exact same issue. Funny thing is that when I register myself on their website as a new unrelated email address and same applicant name, it assigns a new random gwf number each time. No idea how to get it fixed. I emailed vfs and those idiots told me to contact the premium home office line. And I have been trying to call that line but have not had the time to wait hours to speak to someone. Will try again today, but I suspect I will also get in the endless loop of finger pointing without any results.

May just go to vfs london office and ask them.

I called that line and it's basically useless - their only remit is to sign post you to information on government websites. They won't engage in any conversation about third parties.

We got an email back from VFS that said they know it's an issue, and that we should just continue uploading files - but there is no option to upload files. It's an absolute joke.

We are just going to pay for scanning assistance and scan the files at the VFS office in Tokyo.