French Visa Applications By Appointment Only !

[wedders]

I'm a British citizen, but had lived in France for 15 years until coming to Thailand last September. After six months in Chiang Mai I was all set to stay in Thailand on a permanent basis (retirement visa, necessary funds deposited in Thai bank), Thai girlfriend, preparing for marriage, when ... my ex-wife back in France passed away suddenly at just 46, leaving my two children, 12 and 15 entirely on their own. Of course I flew straight back to look after them - they have no other family.

For various reasons it is not possible to bring my children to Thailand, so my next step was to see about obtaining a short-term 90 day Schengen visa for my Thai girlfriend so that we could at least get back together again asap. A whole mess of paperwork, but all do-able, and sorted in extra quick time.

Then I discover that with effect from this month (March) the French embassy is only accepting visa requests by appointment, you can't just turn up any more ... and guess what, the first available appointment is May 9th. Disaster, as far as we are concerned. We both really wanted to get back together really quickly.

Two questions ...

Has anyone used a visa application service with experience of dealing with visa requests for the Schengen area, and found it useful/effective? If so, any recommendations?

Does anyone know whether this appointment procedure can be circumvented in 'urgent' cases, and if so, what would be considered urgent? Just seems like yet another method of making immigration laws even tougher to me, although the French Foreign Ministry's site just states the idea is to facilitate things. Sure, pull the other one.

Any suggestions, ideas, would be very gratefully received. We are desperate.

And boy am I p...d off with finding myself back in France, having thought I had seen the last of the place. But kids have to come first.

[sbk]

Its finally been announced to the papers:

France to change visa rule

France says it will speed up the issuing of visas by accepting applications by appointment only from March 17.

From now on, appointments can be made only through the embassy's website, www.ambafrance-th.org, at the "informations utiles - visas/formalit้s d'entr้e en France" section.

Appointments will be given between 8.30am and midday Mondays to Fridays. Passports can be collected from 2pm until 3.30pm.

The procedure, however, is not applicable to the holders of diplomatic or official passport and to visa applications for adoption.

A different procedure will be employed for applications for groups submitted by travel agencies.

The Nation

[sweetchariot]

It's the same at the British Embassy, or at least was 3 years ago.

Try calling the French Foreign Office and explaining the situation.

[lordsux]

Same situation with the Italian and German Embassy. I'm not sure if it's the same external company controlling the visa application appointments but the tactics sound similar, pay 9.-baht a minute + vat to get thrown around the voice menu system and then get a very rude and unhelpful pen pusher that tells you that you have to wait 6 weeks just to hand in an application for a tourist visa.

I'm disabled at the moment and have been the last 6 weeks and need to get to Europe to get a final diagnosis and start treatment. My wife tried explaining this to the person on the phone and was just told that we should call everyday to check if there are any cancellations. We tried the first couple of days and then realized that we were just wasting our time and money.

I feel that my wife has lost the enthusiasm that she had for traveling to Europe, and I don't and can't really blame her.