If you ask anyone who remotely knows me and they will tell you that I am a DIY type of gal. When it comes to travel there is a certain type of thrill that I get from planning out all of the details and then watching as they flow together like a beautiful concerto. However, as we are preparing for our trip around the world the one thing I decided to leave to pros was applying for our Chinese visa.
If you are a DIY travel planner like myself you may be looking at the fees from a visa agency and shaking your head, convincing yourself that you can DIY it. There is a long list of reasons why you shouldn’t, but I am going to give you just 3 in hopes that you think twice before spending heaps of unnecessary money, time, and energy.
1. Money
A simple Google search for “Chinese Visa” will yield a never-ending list of visa agencies, which range from “yep that’s so cheap it’s a scam” to “holy toledo that costs more than my entire flight to China.” That was the first thing that scared me off from using an agency, but trying to find information about how to complete the process on your own does not yield better results. If I wanted to find popular attractions to do in Beijing I could find a plethora of blogs and videos filled with suggestions. A search for walking into the Chinese consulate and actually walking out with a visa are few and far between. What you will find are forums full of people stating that their visas were denied or questions about the process.
Now you may be asking yourself, so how is spending money actually going to save me money? Well, a reputable agency completes these applications every day, they are well versed in what is required for an application to be accepted. If you DIY your application and it is rejected you do not get your money back, instead, you will be required to resubmit the form and pay the corresponding fees again. If you don’t have a Chinese consulate close to you and decide to make a trip out of it and fly to the closest one your application processing may be delayed or worse rejected. We had planned to fly down to San Fransico to process our application and also experience all that the Bay Area had to offer. After researching other traveler’s experiences I decided against it, but if we had visited and something was off with our application we could have been out an upwards of $800 dollars in travel expenses. Can you hear the cash register ringing?
2. Time
If you live in a state that has a Chinese consulate you really may be convincing yourself to just head there to complete your Chinese visa, but here is where you may end up wasting a lot of time. Let’s say that you have your application all ready to go, you take a number and wait 2 hours only to get to the counter and realize that you missed a vital piece of information from your form. You can just fill it in right? Nope, in a lot of cases, the agent at the desk will reject the form for you to complete it again. In the case of the San Francisco consulate I read that this is a common occurrence and if you need to complete your form again they are not free to obtain, an office down the hall will charge you a couple dollars for a fresh form. Typically after you complete the form you need to pull another ticket to be served, tacking on more time to your day. Let’s take out the doom and gloom and say that you filled everything out perfectly, you will still be required to return to the consulate in about 4 days time to retrieve your passport and visa.
3. Effort
Here’s a mistake that I made during the Chinese visa application process, I decided that instead of paying $7.00 a person to take photos at the Chinese Visa agency, I would just take the girls photos on my own. *Que the wrong buzzer* As soon as I presented them to the agency they informed me that they would be rejected by the consulate. She proceeded to pull out a tape measure and a photo guide to show me the stringent photo rules for a Chinese visa. Now mind you I DIYed my the girl’s passport photos with no problems so this wasn’t an issue with my photography skills. Prior to heading over to the agency I had spent over an hour getting the right color white background, trying to get a 4-month-old to actually look at the camera, and telling Roo that she couldn’t smile for the photo, all for naught. I am sure from above you realize the amount of effort is required to DIY your Chinese visa application and making sure that it is absolutely perfect.
The best analogy for your Chinese visa application is for you to think about your absolute worst experience at the DMV. You painstakingly took the time to make sure you had all of the necessary forms filled out, you brought all of the identification they needed, but then when you got to the counter the entire thing went to the left and you left in tears. Just me, ok then? Let’s just leave it at this, the Chinese Visa agencies know what they are doing. The day we turned our application into our Chinese visa agency our wonderful rep took the time to comb through every single line of our application, re-took the girls’ photos, verified that all of our travel documentation was sufficient, and placed our minds at ease, all in less than 30 minutes. We then waited less than a week and I was able to pick our visas up early! Now even though I trusted in our rep I was still holding my breath until we had our visas in our hands. It was an absolutely seamless process, and it was at that moment that I realized paying the additional money was time and money well spent!
If you happen to be in Seattle or the surrounding area you should check out the agency we used Holiday China China. They are also a travel agency if you are looking for more personalized planning for your China travels!
This isn’t a sponsored post and I was not incentivized at all for this post, I was just deeply impressed with the Chinese visa service we used.
