Missed flights, ‘aggressive’ sales and long delays: The reality of Britain's expensive visa extras
One couple paid £450 for a priority service to visit the UK to see the Cricket World Cup – but the documents arrived three days after their flight
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Your support makes all the difference.Rohit Sharma had been looking forward to watching the Cricket World Cup in England for years. He and his wife Khushboo, along with eight relatives including his parents, bought tickets to watch England play India, coming together from across the globe to reunite as a family.
Wanting to “be on the safe side”, the 34-year-old, who lives in Washington DC, paid a fee of $560 (£463) for the couple’s UK visa applications to be processed under the “priority service” offered via VFS – a private firm outsourced by the UK government to process visa applications – which aims to process visas within three to five working days.
Five days later, he received an email from the Home Office stating that his application had been dispatched and that his passport and would be returned by VFS. But two weeks later, the day before their flight, he was desperately trying to contact the company because their visas and passports had not yet arrived.
His efforts were apparently to no avail. He says the documents arrived 17 working days after they submitted their application – and three days after their flight. They missed the much-anticipated trip after spending about $8,000 (£6,500) on flights, game tickets and visa fees.
The IT worker describes trying to resolve the situation as “like going into a black hole”, adding: “My wife went to the VFS centre in Washington four times and they told us nothing; I spent around $120 calling the Home Office visas helpline and being kept on hold. It was mental torture. There were no reasons given for the delay.
“This was a family vacation to watch the Cricket World Cup. I’d been looking forward to it for years. But we had to sit at home and watch it on TV because of these terrible processes. I have no desire to go to the UK now.”
The Sharmas are two of many UK visa applicants who have complained of poor service from the outsourced service. VFS, a Dubai-based private equity-owned firm which was subcontracted by the Home Office to administer its visa service in 2014, has been accused by lawyers of “gross misadministration” in the processing of UK visas.
As well as missed flights, immigration lawyers and applicants complain that the company has failed to scan important documents submitted as part of applications. Applicants express frustration at the cost of querying issues, with the email service now charging £5.48 per query and the phone helpline charging £1.37 per minute.
VFS has also been criticised for pushing “aggressive” sales of their expensive “premium” services, ranging from document checking for around £5, to a “super priority” visa service costing as much as £1,000, which some are said to feel pressured to buy.
A joint investigation by The Independent and Finance Uncovered has meanwhile revealed that that Home Office has increased its surplus from visa applications by millions of pounds a week since outsourcing visa operations to VFS, and that it takes a cut of the revenues generated from the premium services – although it is unclear how much.
Lawyers said the additional services could exploit vulnerable migrants who may feel pressured to spend more to secure visas.
Amer Zaman, a solicitor from Cranbrook Legal, said some of his clients, especially women applying from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, had felt “intimidated” at the visa application centres to purchase optional extras.
He described how one Pakistani woman claimed she felt pressured into buying a “fast-track” application and then spent five hours waiting to be seen, during which she was not allowed to use her phone to speak to her husband who was in the UK.
“We are often told by our clients that they were led to believe their application would not be processed until and unless the extras were purchased,” said Mr Zaman. “Our clients have repeatedly said that it is the kind of behaviour they would expect from their own authorities but not from the UK authorities who they feel have ‘integrity’.”
VFS says that it makes clear at all customer touch-points that these extra services are entirely optional.
The Home Office and VFS said they did not comment on individual cases.
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