Hello cobra2, harmd, cnhartford, et al. Today I received an email from UKVI with my biometrics appointment, for next Monday! Here is my timeline:
Eligibility criteria: UKM
Nationality: United States
Applying from: United States
Method of application: Online
Payment method: Credit card
Date of application: 2020-11-15
Date documents sent: (UPS) 2020-11-16
Date money gone off account: 2020-11-16
Date of acknowledgement by UKVI (by email): 2020-11-16
Date of receipt by UKVI (as confirmed by UPS): 2020-11-18
Date of email requesting biometrics and date of my reply with availability: 2021-02-17
Date of email from UKVI with biometrics appointment: 2021-04-08
Biometrics scheduled: 2021-04-12
So as you can see from the day I replied to the initial request to schedule biometrics to the day I received a response from UKVI was 7 weeks, with the biometrics appointment date being 2 business days thereafter! Interestingly the emailed letter I received this morning was from yet another email address within their system, "
nationalitycovidukvcasreminders@homeoffice.gov.uk", and they added new characters (GWF9) ahead of my application number, for whatever reason. I was searching for just my Case ID number in my email box, but that results in an incomplete search - so now I search for "homeoffice or ########" where ######## is my original Case ID number to find all the relevant correspondence. Maybe that's unique to yahoo mail, but it works for me. Ok, here we go! So I have a couple of days to decide whether to shave off the winter beard for my UK photo
....
As hard as it may be to be patient, I think waiting seems to work ok. Thank you all for the camaraderie!
I arrived at 9:30am and the queue had already begun forming outside the door due to Covid-19 limits inside the building. I joined the queue outside at 9:45 and was admitted by in around 10:10am. The staff was very efficient, nice, and helpful. They took my letter, quickly found my appointment made by UKVI in their logs and checked me in. I had to wait briefly, then was called to take my biometrics which included photograph, signature, and fingerprints of all fingers of both hands - all electronically recorded. They stamped by appointment confirmation letter and I asked what I should do with it, but said since everything is electronically recorded there was nothing for me to do. I was done and out the door by 10:30.