French long-term visas

[Jacques Vert]

Booking an Appointment

When submitting our applications online, we applied one after the other and received separate reference numbers and a group reference number. So one might assume that you book your appointment as a group, but this is not the case; each applicant is processed separately. (God knows what happens if one of us is approved and the other isn't?) The process for booking an appointment is confusing.

When/if you manage to login, you will notice it says there are no active applications; in fact, this means that you don't have an appointment yet, not that your application has gone astray. You then click on "Start New Booking" and you pick your application centre (either Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide or Perth), the appointment category "Visa" and the sub-category "Long Stay Visa". If there are appointments available, you will see something like this: Earliest available slot for 1 applicants is : 17-05-2024.

It never says "2 applicants"! You click on continue, fill in your details and then click "Save". At this point it asks you if your wish to add another applicant: DON'T! If you do there will be no appointments as each applicant needs to apply and also book an appointment separately. Of course there is nowhere that tells you this. At some point I managed to speak to a call centre agent that spoke clearly enough so that I could understand her and she advised to book separate applications and then call and ask that the appointments be changed to the same day. We tried that but when we called back we were told "No, you have to reschedule the appointments online yourself". So you will most likely end up with appointments on different days which for those that live outside the five capitals noted above, can be most inconvenient. Only thing you can do is to check regularly and see if a (cancelled) appointment appears on a more convenient day.

So now it's time to get the paperwork together....

 

[Jacques Vert]

Documents

One of the first documents required to be presented at the interview is a copy of the online application printed and signed (or is that two copies?). I wish they had mentioned that when I completed my application! Of course, once you proceed to try to book your appointment, the online application is nowhere to be found. It doesn't show up an an active application on the booking page: this page gets populated by the details of your appointment for interview.

So a few hours of searching the website, attempting to "track my application", more phone calls/emails, etc., I decided I would have to complete a new online application.

Back to the French Visas' website https://france-visas.gouv.fr/en/online-application (no, not the VFS Global site) and I click on "Start your visa application" and, after logging in, up pops a page with links to our existing applicaitons! OK, printed and signed. What's next?

Well, they want a document showing our accommodation arrangments while in France. Given we will be moving around (as tourist do) this could be quite a lengthly document. +1 spoke to someone at the Consulate (I think) and enquired about documents for stays in an airBnB. The OP had never heard of it! Maybe something has been lost in the translation. They did say hotel bookings were acceptable.

Does anybody out there have any experience regarding airBnB bookings as part of a Visa application?

 

[Jacques Vert]

Another issue with documents.

When you fill in the online application form, you have to nominate the application centre at which you will submit your application/attend for your interview. This doesn't seem like a difficult question however, when you come to booking an appointment you may need to attend a different centre, due to the lack of availability at your preferred centre.

This may not seem like an issue until you read the appointment letter which states that the correct submission has to be chosen (that is, if you said Brisbane in your application then your appointment must be in Brisbane). If you end up with an appointment in Sydney (due to a lack of availability in Brisbane) then you have to make a new application online nominating Sydney. Mon Dieu!

If you can't remember what centre you originally nominated then there is a clue in the reference number: If it starts with FRA1BR........., then it's Brisbane. SD for Sydney, etc.