Moa7 wrote:Good lord it feels like they're mostly just relaxing now and occasionally handling May applications every few days. They've been stuck on May forever
I feel I need to put up something I strongly feel out here:
I understand that its only been 9 weeks to me and some members think I'm being unfair for being "impatient already". For everyone here who've been waiting for a long time and think its unfair for people applying in August/September to complain already need to realize that everyone of us comes from different personal circumstances and may need to travel as soon as possible for various reasons (job, family issues, kids, or many other problems). For many of us it may not
only be for the emotional reasons of joining our spouses to properly start our married lives, but may also involve
a lot of practical reasons to reach the uk as soon as humanly possible.
We've all paid the same fees and all of us fall under ukvi's responsibility to be dealt with as per their standards, i.e.: 95% within 12 weeks, 100% within 24 weeks.
So members here need to stop comparing the anxiety that they are feeling with those of other members who have applied many months before/after them, or making them feel guilty for feeling that way just because of the huge gap between their application dates. We are no one to judge which one of us deserves to travel earlier or later than anyone else. This forum is not about that so we shouldn't make it about that either.
We are all here for each other in this difficult time and every members deserves to feel equally nervous and impatient and deserves the same level of support as anyone else here.
May all of us have the strength to pass through this very nerve wrecking period of our lives, look back at it 10 years from now and have a good laugh while sipping coffee with our spouses : )
I think I have to defend those poor ECO sods a bit.
I used to work in the Consular Section of an Embassy (NOT a UK Embassy, don't get excited) and my average processing time for a visa application, regardless of category was around 24 hours.
That's for a complete, straight forward visa application.
You'd be surprised how many applications were sent in with vital documents missing. Those were sent back without even being assessed, fee non-refundable - so for the UK to assess incomplete applications, refuse them and give right of appeal during which additional evidence can be presented is actually pretty decent.
Then there were applications (mostly settlement applications) where something flagged up. That could be anything. The profession of the applicant or of the sponsor for instance. Certain personal circumstances. Having lived in lots of different countries.
In that case I was often asked to get reports from other government agencies or request assistance from government agencies of other countries. Getting these reports could take anything from a few days to months, depending on how busy the other party was or whether another country thought it was a priority to answer the request for information of an Embassy they have nothing to do with.
In one case I had an application on my "waiting-for-info-pile" for nearly a year.
This had nothing to do with being lazy or being unsympathetic.
Imagining having to deal with 700 paused cases on top of the regular work is an absolute nightmare.