Tourist Schengen Visa for Thai girlfriend. Spain vs other countries.

[Donutz]

2 hours ago, ncc1701d said:

So... the process as with all these sorts of things is a pita. The embassy has outsourced the application procedure to a company called TLS

The External Service Provider (ESP) such as TLS, BLS and VFS are still entirely optional. Though embassies try to uhm.. 'persuade' people not to use their right (!) Of dealing directly and only with and at the embassy. But the embassy is obligated unde EU Schengen rules to tell you how to apply via the embassy. An application direcrly at the embassy is obviously without any services fee, you just pay for the visa (60 euro) and you may pay for EMS return costs if you don't fancy a return trip to the embassy to pick up the passport.

 

But you seem to imply that the normal application via TLS was without any service fee what so ever? That would be fair I suppose, that they only charge the 60 euro visa fee and no service fees. That would be new to me though since most (all) ESP charge a service fee , which can be no more than 30 euros.  Though they would be allowed  to provide extra services and charge for those services. 

 

 

 

Edited October 21, 2018 by Donutz

[sandyf]

2 hours ago, ncc1701d said:

 I made the mistake of just getting for our planned days, and the visa reflects those exact days of the travel insurance. Now we want to extend only one day and I’m not looking forward to how to do that... so don’t be a tight arse like me and get more days than you need.

 

Visa may not be related to the travel insurance, more likely the itinerary, a longer policy may not have made any difference. You should be able to extend the travel insurance with a phone call but the visa could be more of a problem.

A couple of years ago I took my wife to Germany as part of a longer trip. At that time the Germans treated the spouse of an EU citizen as any other visitor and travel insurance was required. We had travel insurance for the whole trip of 4 weeks but the Germans only issued a visa for the 3 days we planned to be in Germany.

[Mai Mee Tang]

So she applied as a regular tourist  (incase of a durable relationship akin to marriage she could have applied for a free visa under the relaxed EU family member rules, but from your original post I assumed your relationship is still fresh, less then say 12 months or 6 months cohabitation, so that wouldn't have worked). 
 
She didn't provide evidence of 34 euros per day (to show she is financially solvable to pay for the duration of the trip), instead you acted as a sponsor. The Dutch have a sponsor/host form for this purpose but usually they require the sponsor to have this form signed by the Dutch municipality or the Dutch embassy, along with the sponsor showing sufficient and stable income (100% Dutch  minimum wage for a fulltime job, about €1600 before taxes). So how did you deal with that bit? 
 
A list of the documents you provided would be nice. The Dutch MFA told me they stopped being relaxed about missing documents so it would be useful to see what you as a non-Dutch person did to sponsor her etc. 

She applied as a regular tourist, that's right, we also provided our condo rental contract and pictures of previous trips outside Thailand together to prove we have been living together for the last 8 months.

As I'm not Dutch, to sponsor her I provided:
- A sponsorship letter, introducing myself and providing all the relevant explanations.
- Bank statements of the last 3 months (both hers and mine).
- My 3 last payslips.
- My European Job Contract, which is better than the Dutch minimum wage.

All the hotel bookings were on her name backed up with my credit card. The flights itinerary was showing the names of both of us.

[ncc1701d]

2 hours ago, Donutz said:

The External Service Provider (ESP) such as TLS, BLS and VFS are still entirely optional. Though embassies try to uhm.. 'persuade' people not to use their right (!) Of dealing directly and only with and at the embassy. But the embassy is obligated unde EU Schengen rules to tell you how to apply via the embassy. An application direcrly at the embassy is obviously without any services fee, you just pay for the visa (60 euro) and you may pay for EMS return costs if you don't fancy a return trip to the embassy to pick up the passport.

 

But you seem to imply that the normal application via TLS was without any service fee what so ever? That would be fair I suppose, that they only charge the 60 euro visa fee and no service fees. That would be new to me though since most (all) ESP charge a service fee , which can be no more than 30 euros.  Though they would be allowed  to provide extra services and charge for those services. 

 

 

 

If there was an extra charge for normal application via tls then I wasn’t aware of it or it was negligible. When it wasn’t perfectly correct the first time she went in, they even said not to bother with the vip service as they did the same job anyway and she would just be wasting her money. But I didn’t want to take any chances second time as it was starting to push the comfort levels on getting the passport back in time. (Or so I thought)

[Donutz]

3 hours ago, sandyf said:

Visa may not be related to the travel insurance, more likely the itinerary, a longer policy may not have made any difference. You should be able to extend the travel insurance with a phone call but the visa could be more of a problem.

Indeed, generally the dates you fill in on the application form is the dates they work with.  Some embassies round these up, so that simply hand out 15-30-60-90 day visas.

 

Extending the visa within the EU (Schengen) is up to each member state. Most have a policy of only allowing an extension if it concerns an emergency of some sort or other unforseen factor that would call for extending a stay and flying back to the country of origin for a new visa unreasonable. Just adding an extra day of holiday generally is not a valid reason. But it's up to the Germans (immigration) . 

 

The Dutch used to be relaxed (Extending your holiday was no problem if you had the funds, insurance etc) but a year or so ago they changed their policy to urgent reasons only. I dont know the policy of all Schengen members but I'm afraid pretty much if not all of them now stick to 'extentions for emergencies only' policy. 

 

Which leaves you with the option of a formal objection against the initial visa decision (must be done within the legal time frame of -generally- a few weeks of the visa being issued). That can take weeks though so I doubt it's truly a realistic option... 

[Donutz]

2 hours ago, Mai Mee Tang said:

She applied as a regular tourist, that's right, we also provided our condo rental contract and pictures of previous trips outside Thailand together to prove we have been living together for the last 8 months.

As I'm not Dutch, to sponsor her I provided:
- A sponsorship letter, introducing myself and providing all the relevant explanations.
- Bank statements of the last 3 months (both hers and mine).
- My 3 last payslips.
- My European Job Contract, which is better than the Dutch minimum wage.

All the hotel bookings were on her name backed up with my credit card. The flights itinerary was showing the names of both of us.

 

So basically the same as they would ask a Dutch sponsor except swapping the formal form plus legalisation of your signature (by embassy or municipality) for a sponsor letter explaining things a bit. Fair enough,  glad that despite the crack down on insisting on complete applications the Dutch haven't become nitpicky on using the formal form instead of a letter with the obvious details and explanation.

[ncc1701d]

18 hours ago, Donutz said:

Indeed, generally the dates you fill in on the application form is the dates they work with.  Some embassies round these up, so that simply hand out 15-30-60-90 day visas.

 

Extending the visa within the EU (Schengen) is up to each member state. Most have a policy of only allowing an extension if it concerns an emergency of some sort or other unforseen factor that would call for extending a stay and flying back to the country of origin for a new visa unreasonable. Just adding an extra day of holiday generally is not a valid reason. But it's up to the Germans (immigration) . 

 

The Dutch used to be relaxed (Extending your holiday was no problem if you had the funds, insurance etc) but a year or so ago they changed their policy to urgent reasons only. I dont know the policy of all Schengen members but I'm afraid pretty much if not all of them now stick to 'extentions for emergencies only' policy. 

 

Which leaves you with the option of a formal objection against the initial visa decision (must be done within the legal time frame of -generally- a few weeks of the visa being issued). That can take weeks though so I doubt it's truly a realistic option... 

Yeah I’m not expecting much from the embassy in bkk. I might wander into a government office in France and see what they say. But they’ll probably tell us bad luck / too hard. Cheers for the reply.