K-1 Visa Appointment Fee Website Screwup

[Dan C 7]

Hopefully that title isn't too confusing.

 

We're in a weird spot. Our interview is scheduled for Feb 1st. On this ais.usvisa-info.com website, our appointment is registered. We were never prompted to pay the fee.

 

We've gone back and forth in email with the tech support for this website and had a few calls with their customer support. This morning they told us the visa was misclassified as an 'immigrant visa', despite us picking the K-1 option while registering. They said we should contact the Consulate and have them sort it out with the NVC.

I called the NVC this morning and had good and long conversation with someone there who explained how it works, this is supposed to be an immigrant visa and there's nothing wrong with what they sent this website. They even went over some recommended next steps for talking to the website people and then to the consulate for last-resort stuff.

 

So, a few questions. I'm mostly wondering if anyone else might be running into similar issues.

• Has anyone had this issue where they just can't pay the K-1 interview fee?
• Is there some other way to pay it?
• Finally, I'm trying to email the consulate at montreal-iv-dv@state.gov to ask for their take but I'm not getting an automatic reply. Which tells me they haven't actually gotten my email.

[WeekendPizzaiolo 47]

4 hours ago, Dan C said:

Hopefully that title isn't too confusing.

 

We're in a weird spot. Our interview is scheduled for Feb 1st. On this ais.usvisa-info.com website, our appointment is registered. We were never prompted to pay the fee.

 

We've gone back and forth in email with the tech support for this website and had a few calls with their customer support. This morning they told us the visa was misclassified as an 'immigrant visa', despite us picking the K-1 option while registering. They said we should contact the Consulate and have them sort it out with the NVC.

I called the NVC this morning and had good and long conversation with someone there who explained how it works, this is supposed to be an immigrant visa and there's nothing wrong with what they sent this website. They even went over some recommended next steps for talking to the website people and then to the consulate for last-resort stuff.

 

So, a few questions. I'm mostly wondering if anyone else might be running into similar issues.

• Has anyone had this issue where they just can't pay the K-1 interview fee?
• Is there some other way to pay it?
• Finally, I'm trying to email the consulate at montreal-iv-dv@state.gov to ask for their take but I'm not getting an automatic reply. Which tells me they haven't actually gotten my email.

Hi Dan,

 

I had exactly the same issue and also had a back-and-forth e-mail with tech support (the MRV payments team e-mail address). When I spoke to us-visa.com customer service on the phone, they said that they were having issues correcting my online account and that I could pay the cashier at the consulate. I wonder why they gave you different advice.

 

There is no NVC fee for K-1. NVC fees are only for IR1 and CR1 visa applicants who get a green card on arrival. In this case, they must upload all of your documents and have them approved by NVC before getting an interview slot whereas the K-1 applicant supplies hardcopies at the consulate interview. The K-1 visa requires a MRV fee (aka visa fee).

 

Best,

Damian

 

 

 

 

[Dan C 7]

10 hours ago, DE CS said:

Hi Dan,

 

I had exactly the same issue and also had a back-and-forth e-mail with tech support (the MRV payments team e-mail address). When I spoke to us-visa.com customer service on the phone, they said that they were having issues correcting my online account and that I could pay the cashier at the consulate. I wonder why they gave you different advice.

 

There is no NVC fee for K-1. NVC fees are only for IR1 and CR1 visa applicants who get a green card on arrival. In this case, they must upload all of your documents and have them approved by NVC before getting an interview slot whereas the K-1 applicant supplies hardcopies at the consulate interview. The K-1 visa requires a MRV fee (aka visa fee).

 

Best,

Damian

 

 

Well, one of the customer service people said we could pay in-person if all else fails. So we did get that same advice from one person.

Packet 4 is pretty clear that we need to have paid the fee before arriving at the interview. From what the NVC told me, the consulate also can't accept payment directly so I'm not sure why the people from this website would suggest that we could pay in person.

[WeekendPizzaiolo 47]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

 

Well, one of the customer service people said we could pay in-person if all else fails. So we did get that same advice from one person.

Packet 4 is pretty clear that we need to have paid the fee before arriving at the interview. From what the NVC told me, the consulate also can't accept payment directly so I'm not sure why the people from this website would suggest that we could pay in person.

My Packet 4 e-mail was contradictory. It says: "please be prepared to pay the following fees on the day of your interview", which contradicts the next sentence "K (fiancé/e) visas: Must pay before arriving at Consulate.  See https://ais.usvisa-info.com/en-ca/niv/information/fee for more information. (Please bring a copy of your MRV fee payment.) ". Moreover, the address shows the non-immigrant visa part of the website (/niv), which tech support later told me is the wrong section! So if tech support is right, the link a reasonable person would click on to pay there K-1 MRV fee leads to the wrong section of the website.

 

First, we tried registering with the non-immigrant part of the website, but it also did not prompt us to pay an application fee. Tech support then zeroed out the account and sent my fiancé the following e-mail:

 

Quote

“Dear Applicant,

We archived the account you created as you have selected an incorrect condition. Please create a new account with the instructions below.

When applying for a K visa please ensure you are in the Immigrant Visa section of our site. You will need to create an account and follow the prompts. When you are at the page that reads Sign Up you will see 6 conditions. You must choose the condition that reads "I have received a letter from the consular section with instructions to register or schedule a K visa appointment."

You will not see a drop down menu with an option of a K visa class section.

Sincerely,”

Second, we tried again on the immigrant visa part of the website (/iv) using the K option. Also, there was no prompt for an MRV fee.

 

So I believe we tried every combination. There is not much one can do after that. At work, I have been involved in far more complex filings so it would be funny if something like a visa fee would be out of my reach. 🤭 🤪 Almost every consulate has a cashier to pay UCS fees and deal with basic cash services for employees. Whether they're working the day of the interview is another story.

[Dan C 7]

43 minutes ago, DE CS said:

First, we tried registering with the non-immigrant part of the website, but it also did not prompt us to pay an application fee. Tech support then zeroed out the account and sent my fiancé the following e-mail:

Second, we tried again on the immigrant visa part of the website (/iv) using the K option. Also, there was no prompt for an MRV fee.

 

So I believe we tried every combination. There is not much one can do after that. At work, I have been involved in far more complex filings so it would be funny if something like a visa fee would be out of my reach. 🤭 🤪 Almost every consulate has a cashier to pay UCS fees and deal with basic cash services for employees. Whether they're working the day of the interview is another story.

Yeah, we're in exactly the same spot. The P4 instructions having the non-immigrant visa link got us as well. 

 

I have news though. We just got an email from the website's tech people that our case was manually changed to a K-1 visa type. The email has instructions that we need to re-register with a new account, with a new email as well. They forgot to zero out our DS-160 number though, so we haven't been able to finish. Par for the course, I guess.

Hopefully this fixes it.

[WeekendPizzaiolo 47]

3 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Yeah, we're in exactly the same spot. The P4 instructions having the non-immigrant visa link got us as well. 

 

I have news though. We just got an email from the website's tech people that our case was manually changed to a K-1 visa type. The email has instructions that we need to re-register with a new account, with a new email as well. They forgot to zero out our DS-160 number though, so we haven't been able to finish. Par for the course, I guess.

Hopefully this fixes it.

Hopefully! Please keep me posted. They reset our account twice. We had two back-and-forth to reset our DS-160 number. In both cases, their resets did not pan out.

 

I believe I paid for the courier service 3 times already since that payment gets cleared with each account reset. It makes you wonder.

 

[Dan C 7]

Yeah, for sure. If this fixes it I'll see if I can get some guidance from them about others asking about the same issue.

 

That sucks about the courier fee. 

 

Minor miracle. We've already heard back from them about zeroing out our "DS-260" number. Something else I bet you saw, that your registration says its a DS-260 rather than a DS-160.

Still throwing an error saying "this applicant already exists." Seems like they're really on top of our case, at least.

[Dan C 7]

omg it worked

 

It seems the key thing is having them classify your Case number as K-1, rather than Immigrant.

[WeekendPizzaiolo 47]

22 hours ago, Dan C said:

omg it worked

 

It seems the key thing is having them classify your Case number as K-1, rather than Immigrant.

That's good to hear! Even though you had them reclassify your case as K-1/non-immigrant, did you register the appointment on the immigrant (/iv) or non-immigrant (/niv) part of the website?

[Dan C 7]

2 hours ago, DE CS said:

That's good to hear! Even though you had them reclassify your case as K-1/non-immigrant, did you register the appointment on the immigrant (/iv) or non-immigrant (/niv) part of the website?

The Immigrant side. They also had us register a brand new account with a different email address.

 

I also just got an amazingly unhelpful response from the consulate that sums up to "it's the website's problem" and "you better be ready for your interview"

[WeekendPizzaiolo 47]

48 minutes ago, Dan C said:

The Immigrant side. They also had us register a brand new account with a different email address.

 

I also just got an amazingly unhelpful response from the consulate that sums up to "it's the website's problem" and "you better be ready for your interview"

We received a response along those lines as well, but it took 2 weeks to receive it at which point we started to e-mail the us-visa.com people who were much more responsive. 😕

 

The US visa process is definitely not run like a customer-oriented business. I can't count how much unnecessary back-and-forths and ambiguities we ran into during the process.

 

[Dan C 7]

No kidding. I guess when you get paid through taxes and you're only beholden to the law, you don't care as much about customer satisfaction.

Which is a little strange, the NVC support people I've talked to have been great. But then, you can actually get them on the phone.

[WeekendPizzaiolo 47]

1 minute ago, Dan C said:

No kidding. I guess when you get paid through taxes and you're only beholden to the law, you don't care as much about customer satisfaction.

Which is a little strange, the NVC support people I've talked to have been great. But then, you can actually get them on the phone.

Yeah, I can imagine that it's the process and some part of management culture that is not tech-savvy. The rank-in-file are often trying to do a good job and are dedicated to help you. I have some friends in state. They all did a few years of consular visa processing as part of a required rotation. As I understand it, only a few people in DC who have a mandate in technology have the authority to spearhead system upgrading and streamlining to keep the (unfortunately bad) experience consistent across posts. However, these roles are often led by non-STEM folks who may not have the expertise to manage and supervise rollouts to the quality one might expect of a FAANG website. I imagine the canned responses from the consulate are to keep the information consistent across applicants.

 

[Dan C 7]

Interesting. That makes a lot of sense. Also unfortunate and not at all surprising.

[WeekendPizzaiolo 47]

My fiancé was able to pay for the K-1 visa at the Montreal consulate, but it's cash only. In the first window, while giving the documents, he explained the issue that he was having with the website not prompting for a payment. After collecting the documents, the person directed him to the cashier window. The cashier had to open her station. They were accepting only cash payments, but fortunately, we were prepared for this. Others had the same issue and had to leave for an ATM and come back to the consulate with the cash to finish the process.

 

Unfortunately, the courier fee that we paid three times through the website was not recognized on the day of the interview. My fiancé was given an instruction sheet that directed him to purchase a postage-paid XpressPost Medium envelope from Canada Post. It instructed him to address the envelope to himself and from himself. We later learned that these instructions were for emergency passports or CBRAs, not K-1 visas. About an hour after giving this envelope to security, my fiancé received a call from the interview officer saying the envelope was not big enough and to come back with a postage paid Xpresspost LARGE envelope (394 mm by 319 mm) but to leave the FROM blank for him to fill in. He also asked us to include a paper with our case number to make it easier to associate the envelope with our case. The security guard said he could not accept the envelope because the envelope must be Medium or Small and the FROM cannot be left blank. When we tried to explain to him the instructions given by the interviewing officer, he interrupted us and told us to just follow the instructions on the page. Fortunately, the guard's colleague accepted the Large envelope, but said the paper with the case number could not be accepted.

 

In the end, we paid the courier fee 5 times, 3 times through the website and twice on the day of the interview.