Info on visa stamping / dropbox appointments in India

Hi guys,
Just to share my experience on visa appointments in India. It’s a big “legal” official scam. After I submitted my DS-160 about a month ago, I contacted their customer service agents by phone and email before making fee payment and asked if there would be appointments available! They said their typical standard answer (copied and paste) saying they would not be able say anything on that. They said I will need to check online after making payment.

So, I made payment (INR 29,000 for two) and since then have been checking every few hours, every day and night, I haven’t seen a single appointment at any location in India so far. You will need to make sure you don’t exceed number of tries to check in a day otherwise they will lock the account until midnight ET (they say 72 hours but mine was locked until midnight).

Then again contacted customer service asking I am not seeing any dates, am I dong something wrong, they copied and pasted the same standard answer even without reading my email. They are not saying if appointments are booked through next couple years? If so, then they should stop taking fees payment until more appointment are open!! So, this is like a legal scam so that they can keep paying their employee for “not working”.

I understand your frustration and believe me there are thousands of people right now stuck in India and waiting to get an appointment, same ordeal as yours. It is what it is and we will have to live with it.

Keep trying is what I can say at this point. People have tried for more than two months and were able to get a slot booked.

Right, I will. The good thing is that my wife and I are still in the US and did not leave the country due to this uncertainty. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any emergency in next 2-3 years and may be it will be normal then?