URGENT | Block an Appt. date | Please Help

[bittu218]

I have been trying to deal with this VFS from last 10 days for my parents visitor visa appointment and am going through a lot of painful experiences with this new system while trying to block an early appointment date. This is a very critical situation for me as my wife is expecting in the 2nd week of May and at the same time I have my meetings scheduled for which I will have to be out of town. Hence having parents here on time has become an extremely critical issue. Here is a set of things I did to address this to get an early appointment without any success:-

1. Blocked an appointment 10 days back and I got 30th May. I kept observing the website and noticed that the website was displaying available dates randomly. However, when I went ahead a tried to reschedule the appointment, it never showed me those dates in my calendar. I went back to the available dates link and was surprised to see that those dates were still available. So, failed to understand the issue. Any advise? Thoughts on this?

2. After realising that the resuledule stuff is not working, I went ahead and cancelled the blocked appointment in the hope that redoing the app might gimme an early date. So, started filling in all those preety DS forms again and by the time I reached the appointment confirmation point, the date I got now was 2nd June ... hmmm, again frustrated. Kept this there not to touch.

3. However, since this 2nd June was not helpful for me, so after 4-5 days I again cancelled the appointment. Filled in all those preety forms again and this time I did not block any appointment and just saved my apps to the website so that the moment any date is visible, I can quickly get to get if I have the filled forms already available. From last 2 days I have been observing the website with my filled forms ready to grab the date ... I get to see the available dates through the available dates link on home page but, when I try to get those same dates, they do not show-up on my calendar. Hmmm, I am now totally frustrated and do not what to do to address this issue.

Guys, am I doing something wrong here? Can anyone please help and advise me about what needs to be done to address the issue I have in hand? Please...

[smithamc]

i perfectly understand your situation and the frustration u are going thru.

You try checking the date thru rescheduling calender, that might help as suggested by one of the members in the forum. u have to go to reschedule and and cancel option in the vfs website, enter every time the names, passport no. pin no, dob etc and reach the reschedule calender, the date they show are real ones, yesterday i saw apr 17th, 20th, may 3rd etc popping up for a brief period. hope and wish u would get an earlier date.
i am expecting my second baby in march end, my parents have got appt on apr5th, still trying for a date in march.
all the best.

[rcmax]

Preponing an interview date is not allowed according to the mail VFS sent me when I had the same problem. You can only postpone by the reschedule option.

Also someone here wrote that the availability date is shown for a slot for onr applicant and if you have multiple applicants (i.e parents) then you can't get that slot. I don't know how true this is but just repeating what one poster said.

[bittu218]

Smitha,

Are you sure that the reschedule link allows you to prepone?

I think the reason you saw dates in April & May is because your existing Appointment is in April so, it just showed you the dates in future.

My understanding is that you can only postpone using the Reschedule link and cannot prepone.

Please advise.

[smithamc]

i think u can prepone, u can go thru the postings of member ss92, she had an appt on june 6th and she preponed it to march 3rd and her mom got the visa too( happy for her).
i am not sure about the mutiple applicants getting the slot, my advice is u keep trying, with luck and God's help u might get one.
good luck

[ss92]

Yes I did prepone the apt from June 6th to March 3rdon Feb 24th. It is true that I saw the March 3rd date through the availability link but did not see it on the reschedule link. But what I did was stay on the reschedule page and kept trying over and over again and within 5 mins March 3rd showed up there and I selected it.
I have posted this before too - VFS responded to my query saying that dates cannot be preponed. But I was able to prepone the day after I got their response. I would just keep trying via the reschedule link.

[rcmax]

SS92, I think you got lucky OR constant trying probably got around some logic in the code (hidden bug perhaps?) and let you prepone. I tried several times when I saw an earlier date and rescheduling always showed me a date after our appointment date. I closed the browser windows, refreshed and still a few minutes later that earlier date was available while reschedule would not show you that. I was frustrated after spending so many hours on this (Thank God I have a liberal employer as I was trying during work hours!!) and totally gave up on preponing.

[bittu218]

If we assume that the preponing an appointment is not possible, the QUESTION is where are these available dates going away if they are not made available to people wo are trying to prepone. Are these open slots going to the people who are creating new apps?
Any ideas?
Any piece of advice will be highly appreciated.

[bittu218]

ss92,
You said "what I did was stay on the reschedule page and kept trying over and over again and within 5 mins March 3rd showed up". So, how did you do it? Did you keep refreshing it or you did it some other way?
When I try to refresh the page that shows the calendar of dates to reschdule, I get a security alert which says "You have used Back/Forward/Refresh button of your Browser"
Please let me know. It would be really appreciated. I am just desperate to get some date that can work for me.

[ss92]

Refresh does not work Its painful. I went through the reschedule link entering all that info every single time. I changed my browser options to remember form values so I could just keep selecting the value for each text box without typing it in. The Date of Birth is a drop down so unfortunately you have to reenter it. then the computer generated random code.. I have a quick link to the reschedule page added to my browser and Id just click that to restart the process. I had done it so many times that after a while my fingers got used to the whole thing.
The earlier date of March 3rd showed up via the aviability link but not through the reschedule link. I was soo frustrated. So I just decided to go through reschedule and see what would show up. Again it took me like 5 to 10 mins before the date showed up via the reschedule link and I just clicked on it without checking the year. I was in panic till I saw the interview pdf and it stated 2006

[gouthamsri]

Just hit on the refresh button and not the back button. Looks like they have used all freebies from the web to create security on here. Funniest thing is when you hit F5 you get a message it is disabled and you can still hit on the refresh button at the top and it let's you to refresh. Boy, as a software developer this website is too "itchy" for me to not fix it

[bittu218]

Guys,
Please advise as to what shall I do? Shall I take any date that I am getting and then keeping looking for preponing (assuming that it is possible) through the "Reshedule/ Cancel" link
OR
I shall keep my apps saved and wait for the right time to come when the early dates are available for pick-up
Please advise...

[svmain]

Hi I just checked on the VFS wesite and this is the note that I found on Reschedule/Cancel Appt.

Note: Applicants with an appointment will no longer be able to change their appointment to an earlier date without first canceling their current appointment and re-entering the information on their application.

[rekha]

need help in changing the date

hi ss92,

i read that u have preponed the date pls help me in this regard,i entered all the requested info and then clicked on the reschedule button a new window showed showing my mothers appt date no calender was shown and there were two buttons confirm reschedule and other exit
so pls tell me when does the calender with the dates is shown

[bittu218]

rekha,
its the next step (after you click "Confirm Reschedule" button) where you are shown the calendar of available dates to reschudule to. This "Confirm Reschedule" button is essentially misleading because it is not really confirming any new date, it is just taking you to the next screen where you can confirm.