It is first now, in the process of obtaining visas for my trip with the Trans Mongolian Railway, that I have discovered the convenience of using a visa service agency. For me it is just not worth fighting my way through the beurocratic hell by applying on these three visas all by myself when I know that it can be done easier, but you might have other reasons for using a visa service agency such as:
1. You do not live in Oslo and cannot show up at the Embassies yourself. Some countries such as China do not accept applications through mail, and you therefore have to show up in person or pay someone do that for you.
2. You want to save money by not having to send in your passport several times with snail mail for each of the individual visas when you could have gotten them done all in one go with a visa service agency.
3. You are short on time and cannot risk your application ending up in a second priority pile at the embassy desks. Rhumors has it that the Indian Embassy uses much more time on the applications submitted by mail than the applications they receive in person.
4. You do not know how to fill in the application forms correctly. Using a visa agency is like like hiring a lawyer, they know the law better than you and visa agents know visa regulations better than you. I myself had a visa application declined. I then had to do all the work of filling out the applications again which was both frustrating and time consuming. Visa agents provide guides to how the application forms can be filled out correctly to make this process easier for you.
5. You are unsure of which documents to fill out. There are many types of visas, and the forms usually have numbers and codes that can be easily mixed up (e.g DS160, DS156, J-1 and I-864 etc for USA). Smaller embassies might also have outdated application forms loaded on their webpages.
6. Embassyworkers are not known for being very helpful. Consular sections of embassies have no incetive for helping you get your visas on time, or care for reputation for that sake, but visa service agents do! When I contacted visumservice.no for my application I was also given a contact person and reference number for questions about my case.
7. You do not want your passport to get lost. Visumservice.no offer status updates by email and tracking services by logging into their webpages. A couple of weeks ago I had to call an embassy, trying to help a very worried customer. The reason was that an embassy refused to have received a passport, even though it had been sent together with a friends passport, which had been returned together with the visa a couple of weeks later. Luckily they found it after numerous emails and phone calls of begging them to look harder for it.
8. You have enough to think about and to plan for your trip. Dreaming up a trip is fun and easy, booking activities and accomodation a little less fun, applying for visas.. the total oposite of fun. Similar to travel agents, the visa service agents know their stuff and can help you get the job done in exchange for a small fee.
Yes, the service does cost you and I therefore have great understanding of the people who want to apply for visas on their own. In addition there are also a whole lot of countries that do not require visas and some countries can be arranged easier and cheaper upon arrival (check my previous posts to see which). My point however, and reason for writing this post, is just to make you aware of that the visa agencies exist and that they are there to help making complicated and time consuming processes easier and quicker.
Deciding between visumservice.no and visumexpert.no was easy. The only visumexpert.no experience I have heard about is a case where previous customers where given the wrong details on their Russian visa and therefore having their entry to Russia denied, ruining their plans to travel with the Trans Siberian Railway. My experience with visumservice.no was great, and I can easily reccommend them for someone who needs help or just want to spend less time on visas and more time on what they really want to do.
1. You do not live in Oslo and cannot show up at the Embassies yourself. Some countries such as China do not accept applications through mail, and you therefore have to show up in person or pay someone do that for you.2. You want to save money by not having to send in your passport several times with snail mail for each of the individual visas when you could have gotten them done all in one go with a visa service agency.
3. You are short on time and cannot risk your application ending up in a second priority pile at the embassy desks. Rhumors has it that the Indian Embassy uses much more time on the applications submitted by mail than the applications they receive in person.
4. You do not know how to fill in the application forms correctly. Using a visa agency is like like hiring a lawyer, they know the law better than you and visa agents know visa regulations better than you. I myself had a visa application declined. I then had to do all the work of filling out the applications again which was both frustrating and time consuming. Visa agents provide guides to how the application forms can be filled out correctly to make this process easier for you.
| Photo: Collecting stamps and full page visas is a fun part of traveling |
6. Embassyworkers are not known for being very helpful. Consular sections of embassies have no incetive for helping you get your visas on time, or care for reputation for that sake, but visa service agents do! When I contacted visumservice.no for my application I was also given a contact person and reference number for questions about my case.
7. You do not want your passport to get lost. Visumservice.no offer status updates by email and tracking services by logging into their webpages. A couple of weeks ago I had to call an embassy, trying to help a very worried customer. The reason was that an embassy refused to have received a passport, even though it had been sent together with a friends passport, which had been returned together with the visa a couple of weeks later. Luckily they found it after numerous emails and phone calls of begging them to look harder for it.
8. You have enough to think about and to plan for your trip. Dreaming up a trip is fun and easy, booking activities and accomodation a little less fun, applying for visas.. the total oposite of fun. Similar to travel agents, the visa service agents know their stuff and can help you get the job done in exchange for a small fee.
Yes, the service does cost you and I therefore have great understanding of the people who want to apply for visas on their own. In addition there are also a whole lot of countries that do not require visas and some countries can be arranged easier and cheaper upon arrival (check my previous posts to see which). My point however, and reason for writing this post, is just to make you aware of that the visa agencies exist and that they are there to help making complicated and time consuming processes easier and quicker.
Deciding between visumservice.no and visumexpert.no was easy. The only visumexpert.no experience I have heard about is a case where previous customers where given the wrong details on their Russian visa and therefore having their entry to Russia denied, ruining their plans to travel with the Trans Siberian Railway. My experience with visumservice.no was great, and I can easily reccommend them for someone who needs help or just want to spend less time on visas and more time on what they really want to do.
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