Visa Facilitation Services (VFS) Global, a third-party provider of visa and passport issuance services across the world, including Pakistan and India, appears to be encountering serious administrative and potential fraud concerns for the past two and a half years.
The international company, which has three main centers in Pakistan, is entrusted with facilitation for visa, passport, and consular services related to various non-European and Schengen countries such as the Netherlands (Holland) and Portugal.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, VFS Global Pakistan has limited the number of booking slots available for various types of visas for the Netherlands, including the Friends and Family visa and Tourist visa.
Despite relaxed COVID-related restrictions worldwide, VFS has continued to limit the number of visa appointment bookings offered on its website. This is despite a September 16 note on the company website stating the end of COVID-19 entry rules for travelers to the Netherlands, which followed a June 27 notification on the website about potentially longer waiting times for appointments and application processing, citing “a growing number of applicants” wishing to travel to the Netherlands after less stringent COVID-related travel restrictions worldwide.
“The number of available appointments will be expanded as soon as possible,” VFS said in its June 27 notice. “New appointment slots will be added to the online appointment system regularly.”
For an international company with “3395 application centers and operations in 144 countries across 5 continents,” such a problem should have been dealt with additional staff hiring and upgrading its technical resources to make sure new appointment slots are actually added to the online appointment system “regularly.”
However, VFS seems to have mightily failed with regard to staying true to those words and has cost a considerable amount of stress and despair amongst Pakistanis looking to travel to Schengen countries, like the Netherlands, for a period of over two years.
While booking slots typically remain unavailable through the month, a handful of slots randomly appear toward the end of a month following a wait of several weeks. However, the website becomes extremely buggy and fails to proceed to the payment page, randomly popping errors such as “selected booking slot day and/or time unavailable” and “too many attempts made,” requiring the user to log back in after two hours.
This misery ends within 24 hours as the booking slots that appear online (especially in the case of Visiting Family and Friends category) no longer appear after a day of “availability.”
VFS representatives over email and phone prefer to play this off as “limited slots due to growing demand for travel amid relaxed COVID-related restrictions.”
However, anonymous people in hundreds, if not thousands, are posing as VFS Global’s agents on social media platforms like Facebook and illegally selling visa appointments in various online groups for a hefty profit (often at least thrice the amount of the usual visa cost otherwise paid to VFS).
While VFS has previously posted notes of being wary of false promises of jobs or immigration on its website, the company seems to have done virtually nothing to prevent these fraudulent activities in countries like Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh despite clear evidence present online.
The lack of vigilance with regard to making appointment booking slots “regularly” available on its website has facilitated such online fraudsters and scammers.
This indifference on the part of VFS is alarming and online scammers apparently continuing to somehow acquire booking slots to sell at unreasonably high prices to travelers with the innocent intent to visit family and/or friends abroad or take a vacation to take their minds off the daily stress of work and life in general.
Needless to say, VFS’ poor online appointment booking infrastructure and inaction with regard to rampant illegal booking slots sales have made many genuine travelers question if VFS is actually facilitating fraud and setting up potential travelers for failure.
This, combined with the ease in COVID-related restrictions across pretty much all businesses and geographies, there is no reason why VFS should continue to require online bookings and it is high time they let people visit their centers and apply in person, as was the case before 2019 when people were required to directly apply at the offices.
Otherwise, the Netherlands embassy, along with other countries’ embassies, needs to take notice of this situation and just do away with VFS altogether, considering how poorly they are managing this mess.
Besides, their operators on the call regurgitate the same talking points about booking slots being system-generated and for users to just keep checking back for available appointments anyway (same as their unhelpful emails).
Many European governments have delegated their visa appointment bookings to VFS Global. Thousands of Pakistanis who intend to visit Europe are suffering because they are forced to get visa appointments after paying exorbitant fees to these “visa agents”, something which VFS Global continues to overlook.
It is hoped that European governments will look into this matter and will take strict action against the mafia selling visa appointments under the guise of VFS Global’s agents.
ProPakistani has contacted VFS in this regard and is awaiting an official response.
