Thank you Roman and Eugene for confirmation!
Hi.
Congratulations to all who got biometric appointments. Any idea what their cut off date was of pre-approved people in order to get the invite?
Thank you.
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As in the previous round back in June, the invite was based on the initial application submission DUC payment date. Looks like this time the cut-off was Dec 1st, 2021.
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Thanks Buddy, Trying my best to make those dates by getting a Schengen Visa from a different country.
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@tommigun @levartm - Thanks guys, this was super helpful. I accessed the portal myself and was able to make the change myself, so now I have 3 simultaneous slots in Porto on the 2nd Feb, just what I wanted. The next challenge is securing the visa on time!
@elle1 Wonder if you are able to check with your lawyer how they are contacting the SEF? Is it via emails or do they have another channel?
Thanks to help from posters here, I was able to reschedule on the portal myself, so you may want to look into it as well. As per my lawyer, their portal is a bit different and does not have the rescheduling feature, but she was surprised to find out, that I, as a end-user, can actually reschedule. You may want to look for a date, where there are 3 slots available in the same day, or simultenous days in the same city. I was just change to book 3 slots on the same day on 2nd Feb 2022. I kept checking every few hours, and they eventually became available, so you may have to check a few times. My lawyer did state that 26th Dec is the last day to change dates, so you may want to try right away.
To follow up on this, I asked
Can you please clarify this:
This is a sensitive question – we have processes that are settled in less than 90 days and processes that are kept in their office for more time. What we do is, when the process is over 90 working days, we start pressuring the service to apply the legal deadline.
From the nomadgate forums, Lisbon SEF is taking 9 or more months to approve visa applicants after their biometrics appointments. Faro is much faster, nobody has reported about Porto recently
Is AGPC getting clients approved in Lisbon faster than that?
To which they replied
- Yes, we have already received replies from SEF faster than the legal timeline (90 days) and we also have processes that are taking more than 110 working days.
We have both, and this is the message we would like to send you is that we are seeing both situations happening since the beginning of this year. We cannot predict which processes are being handled faster or why, but some of them are faster than others.
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Wondering is anyone here is aware of cases, where SEF made an exception, allowing a family member to submit biometrics with the rest of the family, while the add-on member is awaiting pre-approval, but the rest of the family has been invited to submit biometrics? My lawyer has e-mailed SEF to ask if this is possible, but I wonder if there have been earlier cases like and if E-Mail is the best way to approach this? Our appointment is at the Porto office on 2nd Feb.
Hello, I am in the same situation. Coimbra February 17, me and my wife made an appointment, but we could not get a biometry appointment for our children. We sent an e-mail explaining the situation to SEF on 22 December, but it has not been returned yet. If your e-mail is answered, will you let me know? I will inform
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Good luck. A difficult situation. btw, I have pre-approval (on 13 Oct 2022) but my husband is still waiting.
Sure thing. The email has been sent by our lawyers, but I will let you know as soon as we hear back.
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We are a family of 4 in the middle of the same frustrating situation. My application and my wife’s application submitted 9/21; our children’s applications submitted 10/21. Pre-approval for all 4 received 1/22. My wife and I received an invitation to schedule biometrics 6/22. We had our biometrics appointment last month. We spent 5 months asking our lawyers if there was any way to get us all on the same biometrics appointment. They asked SEF every time they were there for another appointment; no luck. We just last week got the invitation to schedule the biometrics appointment for our boys.
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Is there a reason you applied for the children a month after your own application?
On the plus side, you all have appointments! There are worse things than going to Portugal twice…
Has anyone submitted by 7th Dec 2021, pre-approved in Nov 2022 got invitation for Biometric now? Thanks in advance for informing. Hope my lawyer hasn’t missed any mail.
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The delay was actually 2 weeks (late September/early October). Some of the documents for our children took a little longer to get.
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Right now (and based on my own experience with my dependents), it looks like all apps paid on Dec. 1 2021 or later have not received biometric invitations.
I made an appointment for biometrics on 26th January and my lawyer received the confirmation. Based on this I bought my airline tickets and hotel bookings as they are needed for getting the Visa. But now I’m told that the appointment is no longer there in the system. I’m panicking at the moment. Has anybody else experienced this?
I was wondering if anyone with a direct access can share screenshots of to what they have access to? And a link to that portal?
Based on my experience so far, I’ve been struggling to navigate my way around various official portals in Portugal as they are not intuitive at all
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Thank you. I have realized the same from this group. So, we need to wait a bit.
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Here’s the link to the ARI portal, including the user instructions at the bottom of the page:
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Thanks!
It doesn’t look there is an option to create direct access to the existing application which has been lodged.
I wonder if anyone has done it by
- getting their lawyer to add the email address from their side (not sure if it is an option)
- created new profile on ari Sef website and it magically got matched with the existing application