But I have to hand it to the British government for managing to best everyone when it comes to outsourcing.

In the midst of the mountains of paperwork required to attend university in Wales, there is a wee requirement for a UK Visa. The authorities have provided an easy-to-use, relatively quick online application process that allows you to fill in the info, pay with a credit card, print out the application and Bob’s your uncle. Unfortunately this process doesn’t take into account people like me.

I made a mistake.

I made it on probably THE most important application necessary to study Welsh in the UK.

I made it on a Friday.

By Monday morning I looked and felt my best after three days of stress and dreams of trying to get through UK immigration with a miss-matched visa and passport. Pushing that nightmare scenario aside, I decided to phone the embassy in Los Angeles where my paperwork was being processed, explain the problem and find out how to resolve it. Easy Peezy.

A very nice recorded message answered the embassy phone, informed me of my selection choices (which of course had changed) and suggested I try number 2 - the visa hotline. Obediently, I pressed number 2 and was sent to another very nice recording explaining that all visa matters had been outsourced to a contractor and any information I wanted would cost a premium price that would be charged to my phone.

I phoned back and pressed 0 for the operator. An invalid entry.

I phoned back and pressed all the other buttons which took me to a series of other recorded messages directing me to phone somewhere else.

I pretended to have a rotary dial phone (Remember those?) and was disconnected after I failed to make a selection.

I finally gave up and phoned the 900 number that was given by the recorded message and on the website figuring if I had to pay the cost to resolve the problem it would be worth it. The number was out of service.

Back on the website, desperate now and seeing myself spending the rest of my life in the Tower of London, I combed the website for information about how to fix a mistake. No luck. Guess other people don’t make mistakes. :O(

With naught else to do I broke out the credit card and phoned the 800 number where I was informed that it would cost me a premium per minute charge to use the service. It was explained that the British government had outsourced all the visa stuff in a effort to make hoards of money and besides, Blair wanted to holiday with Bush in the tropics this year and they needed to raise funds to assist with his airfare.

Premium is right! $2.49 a minute!!!!!!

I took a deep breath, re-examined my food needs for the month and provided my credit card number. The system promptly informed me that the charges would start after the beep.

BEEP!

A nice man then came on in a recorded message telling me my call was going to cost me a premium charge of $2.49 a minute but they were awfully glad I called. Yes. Thank you. GET ON WITH IT!

I then spent several minutes listening to the mellow sounds of elevator music whilst fighting off the vertigo caused by the rapidly spinning dollar signs as they flashed by. The nice man popped on now and again to tell me I could be getting all this information for free if I bothered to go to their website.

I enjoyed this advice for the first five minutes, but after that I began screaming at him that I would happily visit the website if they actually provided any information on the website. GET ON WITH IT!!!

Well, after an amount topping the cost of the visa itself had been charged to my credit card, a real live person came on the line and in 30 seconds explained helpfully that I had to fax my correction to the embassy in L.A. where they would process it.

I did as I was told along with a letter of explanation realizing that it’s probably a moot point as no one really works there. Centuries from now someone will open the cobweb-covered doors to a large room containing a small mountain of faxes with mine buried in the middle somewhere and an answering machine telling everyone to push number 2.

This entry was posted by Arwen on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 4:22 pm and is filed under General Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.