Glad it worked for you. Bummer they couldnāt get your wife in, as well. Did you use a service for the criminal background checks? Seems beneficial to know of a provider that can send digital copies of an apostille with a quick turn.
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Fingerprints done at a local place (apparently USPS no longer does them in our areaā¦ canāt speak to other areas, however). Sent off the FBI automatically by the service. Background checks received within a few hours. We then sent them to One Source Process - they were quick about getting back in touch and me making payment.
However, as said, they set the expectations of 6-8 weeks turn-around. I donāt think itās so much that they did a quick turn-around, but that the US-DoS was faster than expected on this.
Did you tell SEF (by email) that none of the dates worked for you?
My husband couldnāt make his appointment, and he told SEF this, but has not been invited in next two batches. We are filing a case, seems to be the only way. Our lawyer told us that itās absolutely not the case that you get āone shotā at the biometrics - her firm belief is that itās simply their poor systems that doesnāt have a method of inviting back those people who are still outstanding.
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If the system doesnāt let you, then you have one shot lol
Your husband shouldāve taken the first opportunity!
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He couldnāt - he had an exam (compulsory for his job) in Singapore, 15 hours prior to the time of his appointment, he would have had to bail on the exam which would probably have meant losing his job. People shouldnāt need to risk losing their career / income in order to make it to the appointment. Weāve invested a significant amount in the country and paid punchy fees. Itās totally reasonable to expect to be able to reschedule an appointment.
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I agree Portugal is offering a completely unacceptable level of service
But reading all the stories about people missing their appointments is crazy. Hell or high water you need to get an appointment slot that works for you and be there
Good luck with the lawsuit!
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I did not tell them this, because I personally did not need to reschedule my appointments.
However, on the more general question of emailing to SEF, I did use email to communicate with them as recent as last week on a separate issue, and they replied to me on the next working day with a resolution and apologies.
So they seem pretty responsive as far I can tell 
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I (primary investor) just had biometrics a couple weeks ago. Today I received an agendamento notification for my partner.
Dunno if this means thereās movement on the partner front, or whether it was just dumb luck.
Hearing more biometrics appointments have opened up. Check your lawyer/email
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Iām hearing the same, but havenāt been able to talk to my lawyer yet. Any idea what date range the appointments are in?
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Iāve seen 6th July and 29th August, so at least Jul/Aug.
About an hour ago there was a lot of availability in July/Aug/Sept in Faro.
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Yes, I was able to secure 3 appointments in Faro in mid July. Unfortunately my wife was not yet eligible, so two trips may be necessary.
Today we received invitation for dependant applicant and no invitation for the main applicant, its weird:(
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Family of 4 - 2 of us were pre-approved and the other 2 of needed to submit updated paperwork. The 2 who were pre-approved just got a link to make an appt. Our atty is going to try to consolidate so all 4 of us can go at once but weāre not optimistic.
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Donāt be optimistic. My family were all pre-approved on the same date, but my baby who we applied for 3 months after the rest of us, as she wasnāt yet born, was not invited to do biometrics at the same time as us. Our lawyers tried and tried to get them to do her biometrics at the same time as us (as obviously she had to travel with us, and Iāll have to go back again with her), but cannot. Still waiting for her to be invited 6 months later. We submitted her application early Jan 2022 so Iām hopeful sheāll be in the next batch.
Similar to Ottodelupe, as the main applicant I had bio appt in April. Husband (Family Reunification applicant) was invited to book yesterday. We selected an appointment in early August.
As of yesterday Faro seemed to have good availability in August and I believe into September as well.
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It was good to see the dependent appointments come out yesterday. My wife was beginning to wonder if I was going to leave her and the kids behind
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Its great that there are more appointments, but I donāt understand why the delay for approval after biometrics? They could unclog the system if they cleared all the backlog.
I guess common sense is not so common!
I assume they do legwork to investigate the investment, applicant, etc after biometrics
Now, how much they actually do and how efficient they are and how many people they have working on it