I thought I would give an overview of what happened on my appointment today in Manchester. There are no signs directing you to the area where the visa appointments are held. We asked a security guard who told us it was on lower ground floor all the way to the back. We arrived about 55 minutes early and were told to come back at our appointment time as they see 6 applicants every half hour. So we found a seat in the library and waited until about 10 minutes before 10. There were a couple of people waiting when we got back to the area. In front of us were the 6 chairs near the biometrics terminals. We were third in line and were great about letting my son and I do things together(we explained he was high functioning autistic). They had us go to a desk to check in and then back to the seats to wait for biometrics . The two people in front were struggling with the biometrics so they decided to do ours manually(we were taken to a desk and they took photos, fingerprints, and signatures. As they were taking our biometrics another person was scanning in both mine and my sons passport pages.
They verified that all the documents had been scanned and had even told me that had looked at them the day before and they were perfect (the 10 hours to get them uploaded and organized was worth it...lol).
She then siad she was happy to send them to the home office if I agreed and then off they went. I did ask about the time frame wanted to know when I should call home office she stated that we should hear pretty quickly as the turn around time has been very quick lately. And if I do not hear in 48 hours to call home office. That is a bit encouraging. Maybe they have begun working out the kinks.
Even though it said to bring all the docs they did not have to see them. They did make every effort to put you at ease and all were nice.
One thing I have to say is while we were there someone came wanting to speak to someone about his visa. He did not have an appointment and the receptionist told him they were fully booked and had to go to the website to make one. He was starting to get rather aggressive and I saw no security on the lower ground floor and there are no metal detectors to get into the visa area.
Hope this helps anyone who is looking for an appointment at the Manchester centre.
