Reply from AGPC, essentially saying we can go with the urgent option to pay the old fee, and separately that they don’t see any particular trends for each SEF office and final approval, which I’m fairly disappointed to hear because it does not match with what we see here, and I’m not sure I really trust that. But perhaps they don’t have much volume of GV applications to go by - I’ll ask when I have a zoom with them.
Thanks for the update. That’s good information. Does this mean that you are going to pay the fee now without a DUC? How would one do that?
I don’t believe that is the plan, no
Hello Garrett
i am at the final approval stage and it is due in couple of days i assume, but we are not eligible to pay now before the increases at the fees you reccon?
thanks
Talk with a lawyer, you will likely have to sue
Pretty great scam if you ask me, just delay 8000+ applicants through no fault of their own and then charge them higher fees when you get around to processing their papers 2 years later.
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They could arbitrarily raise fees at any point, if they were doing it to just screw people over why didn’t they do it earlier
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Yeah I don’t think anyone claimed the fees would be stable but the amount of increase did catch folks by surprise.
As you mention if they’re being intentionally malicious, I guess there is nothing stopping them from making these fees insanely high so that no one can practically apply or renew.
That wouldnt be malicious, it would be dumb. But they can raise prices quite a lot without too many people giving up – you just spent 500k+ on a house in another country, a few extra grand every couple years is a deal breaker? – and increase their revenue significantly.
ARI applicants are both cash cow and scape goat, and PT is terrible at animal husbandry.
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I was under the impression that the 30% increase was across the board for all SEF fees rather than just GV ones. Of course, the already high GV fees have a greater impact from the 30%.
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Just adding this here for anyone not following the automatic online renewal thread:
This data point suggests that the 33% fee increase is meant to incentivize online applications/renewals going forward, and as long as applications are submitted online there shouldn’t be any:
The fees for points ii, iii, v, vi, vii, viii and xiii are reduced by 25 % when applications are submitted through a digital channel.
(From the source Chris linked in the first post, translated with DeepL.)
In other words, since GV applications are submitted digitally in most cases, I don’t expect there to be any fee increase at this point for most applicants.
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Thanks Thomas. What I’m not clear about is whether the initial application also attracts the 25% discount. I suspect it doesn’t - after all the application itself (ie the formal submission of the forms at the SEF office with the biometrics appointment) is made in-person, not online.
If that’s right, then the fee increase is about €2,100 for the initial application. It would be useful to get feedback from someone who’s paid the fee on final approval since the fee increase.
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Good point, however I would still see this as a digital submission since the initial application is made online and you don’t have a choice regarding attending the biometrics in person or not.
Time will tell if AIMA sees it the same way, but I’m a glass half full kind of guy 
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I’m pretty sure I saw someone somewhere who’d had a recent approval, say they were NOT charged higher fees in the payment request. I can’t remember where I saw that now though…
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I definitely saw that here too
It may be that my pending lawsuit is unnecessary, which is great news! At worst I am out 1k EUR and get a cool story to share about suing the Portuguese Government (as cool as that sort of story can be I suppose)
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I am still in the process of discussing a potential lawsuit over the increased fees with my lawyer, but they seem to think that the increased fees will apply to me.
I just heard from my lawyers in Lisbon. They said that the SEF was processing visas from September 2023 (the month that we gave our biometrics) and that the increased fees would be applied to our visas (we have 3 family members). This increase is about 6K of difference than we had budgeted for. I would be interested in filing a lawsuit to recoup the difference as the visa will have taken 14 months to process if we receive it in the next few weeks. I am interested in joining a lawsuit with other people if it helps to save in efficiency and fees.
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What I read here in the forums is that, even though that there’s this fee increase, but if you pay it online, you get the whole increased amount back as a discount. So in the end, you don’t pay more than what you were paying
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Correct for renewals, unclear about first cards.
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we filed a lawsuit and nothing happened, please shower me with kudos!! sorry G, im the guy who loses PT lawsuits around here!