Inability to Schedule an Interview at the US Embassy in Nairobi

[KF & OS 109]

Hi everyone!

 

I wanted to reach out because my fiancé and I are at the stage of the K1 process where we need to schedule an interview. Our case is with the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. We have received an instruction email from the embassy stating we must pay the visa fee before we can schedule an appointment. However, the website does not allow us to pay (doesn't provide a payment slip) since there are no available visa dates open. We have tried calling the US number for the embassy several times and have received the same information. The last lady I spoke with told me that they last opened up spot in February! From what we have read, it seems that people typically move right along at this stage and schedule an interview about 3-4 months out into the future. I am wondering if anyone else has had this experience where they couldn't even schedule an interview out into the future with the Nairobi embassy. It is very hard to keep waiting without any sense of when they will open and I have also been wondering if all the spots will fill very quickly since they apparently haven't opened in over a month and there must be other people who moved to the embassy stage before us waiting to sign up.

 

Has anyone had any similar issues or do you have any advice? I want to make sure we aren't missing anything here. We keep having to check the CEAC website every day but I am starting to wonder if the page will ever change (see attached photo) and if there is something else we need to be doing.

 

Thank you!

SO

 

[Lelah22 8]

We had to wait several months for a visa interview. We had everything complete in November and it wasn't until the middle of January that there was an appointment available. And then the earliest appointment available was for the beginning of April. Don't worry, this long wait is actually really normal for the Nairobi embassy, unfortunately. Just keep checking every day. Good luck! 

[Ryan_Chialien 15]

I think this is kind of normal for many of the embassies.  My wife was from Taiwan.  The same thing.  She followed the process until she hit schedule and interview and there was no spots available.  It took a couple weeks before any opened up.  I had wrote several complaint notes to the embassy asking how this system could be so horrible that they can't just have months worth of interview slots available instead of only a few at a time.  This is maybe the most frustrating part of the whole K1 process and seems totally rediculous that the embassies can't have a better system for scheduling interviews that goes out many months.   Hotels and any other modern scheduling systems can go years out.  After complaining someone at the embassy did send us a note to give us a heads up that slots were opening right before they did. It seems like you just have to keep checking several times a day and hoping to get one when new slots become available.  It's a really lousy system.

[KF & OS 109]

Thank u Leah and Ryan for the replies, this makes me feel so much better.

 

Leah, where u also unable to generate the payment deposit slip until mid January or for ur case u were able to generate and pay and then had to simply wait until there was a slot for an appointment? am asking this because we are unable to go past that page u see in the screenshot and we dont understand why they would not let us at least pay the visa fee and wait for them to open up slots?

 

Thanks

 

KF