Mercan & IAS Communication

My family was in the process of applying for a Golden Visa in Portugal (step 1) when the announcement was made about the possible legislative changes. Ever since then the communication from Mercan & IAS has been extremely slow and requires multiple prompts to get a response. Is anyone else experiencing the same?

I am sure every lawyer is slammed with clients asking for answers they do not have. My own definitely is! :sweat_smile:

@jenomohundro thanks for posting and sorry for your frustration.

Can you elaborate what do you consider “slow”?

The reason why I’m asking, It’s important to get the idea of a “Portuguese pace” (which is set by culture and external factors). The response time highly depends on the substance of a question and the answer, thus I’d say it’s normal for a regular status email to be answered within 2-3 business days. If there is nothing to respond it may take weeks, as they may be trying to get more substance on it.
I could be wrong, but it’s considered impolite to send “watered down” emails or emails without no positive/negative results.

In addition, I’d like to mention that in my experience IAS has been really good in communication, very thorough responses to the quirkiest detailed questions I’ve asked them. It took time, but the responses were top-notch.

Hope this helps.

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That’s similar to my experience with professional firms; a response takes longer than I’d expect from a UK/US office, and just when I’m thinking it’s been overlooked, out pops a detailed response in formal English.

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I will give you examples. I sent an email to Mercan and cc’ed several people on April 1st, I have yet to hear a response from anyone. Regarding IAS what used to be a 24-48 hours response time is now 1 to 2 weeks with several prompts to even get that response. It was not this difficult to communicate with either organization prior to January.

One thing I’ve learned is that my Portuguese lawyers are faster to respond to WhatsApp messages than they are to email.

Sometimes they are same-day (or nearly so) on email, sometimes it can take days.

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FWIW my lawyers generally respond within a day or two, though I’m still waiting for an update post-draft-release from last week. I’ll poke them tomorrow and see if I get something

I find that if if they do not respond to my email, I call them. They either take my call, call me back, or take my call on the second call. I do get free cell phone minutes to Portugal, though. But calling seems to work better for me dealing with my Portuguese service providers versus email.

My lawyer seems to respond to the original email after a few days, but then followups are generally same day. It is as if my day comes up in the queue and then it is a free for all!

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Same here. Communication from IAS slowed down markedly. In response to my last email to my re[quote=“jenomohundro, post:1, topic:57884, full:true”]
My family was in the process of applying for a Golden Visa in Portugal (step 1) when the announcement was made about the possible legislative changes. Ever since then the communication from Mercan & IAS has been extremely slow and requires multiple prompts to get a response. Is anyone else experiencing the same?
[/quote]

fthem they actually said, we don’t talk to clients on the phone because we’re too busy.

Yes,same here. Communication from AIS slowed down but NOT communication from my independent Portuguese immigration lawyer so I don’t think it’s just about Portuguese timing.

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Bad news for everyone rushing to apply before the program ends…if you thought Dec 2021 people had a long wait, I bet people applying now will be 2 years out from pre-approval.

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