| rev:text
| - I would give this place no stars if that was an option. The previous reviews are really out dated because the service just keeps going down hill year after year. I visit China almost every year and never had a near positive experience at this place. To sum it up, the people who work here do not care at all about you and your precious time and will not give you consistent information on what exactly they need. You either come prepared to the teeth, or chances are you're going to have to make multiple trips.
Originally you could fill forms out by hand, however, they decided to change that on Jan, 2014, except they did not put a notice up on their website. You show up with a hand filled form, you have to redo everything on the computers provided and pay to print the forms out. Finally after all that's sorted, you're looking at about a 2-4 hour wait to actually get called up to the counter.
Now my recent experience here was even more frustrating. Due to the large volume of people, they will no longer take walk ins, and you have to book an appointment online to drop your forms in. That's seems reasonable however, there was no option to book an appointment if you needed urgent service. Appointments were filled two weeks into the next month and my ticket was way before that. I called in and they said if Im paying for the express or urgent service, I don't need an appointment, and could just walk-in so that's what I did. I arrived at 9:30 am (30min after they open) and got a number, what they didn't tell me was that they'd have to service every single person with an appointment first, and maybe if a spot opened, they would squeeze me in for the urgent service I paid extra for. Instead of telling me to just come at the end of the day, I ended up waiting there from 9:30 am - 4:30pm. In addition to the long wait for a rushed service, the person at front desk gave us complete different information than the person at the counter, and messed up the type of visa I requested. My forms were filled correctly, I wanted a visa with multiple entries and told them just that. They asked me to change a few things on my form and I did what they had asked and didn't think twice about it. When I came back to pick up my passport, they gave me the wrong type of visa. Instead of multiple entries, it was a single entry... After investigating, the information they made me change affected the type of visa I wanted. I made it clear to them I wanted multiple entries and after their instructions, I ended up paying 200 bucks for the wrong type of visa.
It sucks that there's no way around this wretched place if you need a visa to China but here's a few tips after multiple horrible encounters:
1. Plan ahead! Book an appointment way before you need the actual visa. If it's an emergency get there before the doors open, you have a way better chance to squeeze in and get everything done before anyone shows up for their appointments.
2. Read absolutely everything on the documents they require. They're very picky about them and will give you shit for the tiniest details and won't think twice about sending you back.
3. Confirm with them after submitting your forms on the type of visa you want to get. Three important things to double check with them: How long you plan on staying, how many entries, and the length of which the visa is effective.
Hope all that helps and may the odds be ever in your favour.
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