VFS Global - UK Visas & Immigration

208 Bloor Street West, Unit 601 is the updated address as of March 10th 2022. Ensure all of your documents are uploaded 24 hours in advance, otherwise there is a $60 scanning fee at the centre, you cannot upload documents once you are at the appointment. They won't tell you whether your uploaded documents suffice or not, they will leave it up to you to decide if you'd like to upload any more supporting documents (for the $60). Also note that the documents disappear from your online application within the 24 hour window. People often think this means the documents are lost and therefore have the documents re scanned. Other fees: SMS alerts are $5. Check other reviews to see if this is worth it for you. Phones are allowed, they just have to be on Silent/Vibrate. Laptops are not allowed. $7 locker fee if you bring a laptop. Passport pickup is free but apparently takes up to 7 days longer. Passport mailing to your address is $53. They say passport pick up is longer because you have to coordinate a pick up time with the office via email. If you show up without your document checklist, they will ask you go somewhere else and print it. Usually 180 Bloor. Arrive 15 min early to figure out parking, security check in, etc. Waiting time will depend on number of staff working and other applicants in line. Some are complex and could delay you. Normally, just the applicant is permitted inside but the you can have a second person accompany them for something like translation. Note that the waiting area is tight (seating capacity of 12 total). Good luck. Update: It took 6 weeks for a visitor visa. Passport pickup was available same day.

I don't even give a star for this service. There is absolutely no way to communicate with them. They charge you $5 for an email and then send you an auto reply. How on earth you could treat people like that? I submitted my visa application on Dec 13. I have rescheduled my flight two times yet, tons of money and time and energy are wasted. For the God's sake, just take time and read some of these reviews to get a sense of the condition of your service. Never I have had such a horrible experience with any visa application in my life.

I won’t blame staff but rules are exhausting. If you want to apply for standard don’t make you travel plan before getting your passport back, it’s going to be delayed. You can call them or email them, but useless service they don’t know the status of your application, on top of that they charge for email and making a call. One of the worst visa office in the world I am not sure about the people I called 3 time and every time I got different answers. This visa is nothing but scam to earn money. I chose text service and till I withdraw my application (due to they told me the wrong time duration)I didn’t receive a single text. Scam 60$ only for scanning for God sake. I asked the lady if I can keep my passport but she said their isn’t any option like that. Only due to wrong information provided by visa management services I lost 4000+$ DO NOT TRUST THEM PLAN EVERYTHING AFTER YOU GOT YOUR VISA BACK.

Personally, had a very good experience with the VFS staff at the UK office on the 6th floor. Managed to get a same day appointment and they were very helpful in accommodating my requests. Got my passport back within a month and didn’t pay anything additional for text/emails (as I don’t think it’s necessary, they send you an email when it’s ready for pick up). All in all, a very smooth process!

I have never seen such a rude and such an incompetent team of people. I was applying for a visitors visa from France, and the lady who was managing my file made my life miserable. I have never felt more uncomfortable and annoyed in my life. I had a travel insurance from my university, and it was explicitly mentioned on the policy description. The coverage amount was pretty big. However, they made me purchase a separate travel insurance because my insurance just didn’t seem legit to them. They first made me buy a redundant travel insurance then made me go have it printed in a printer office which wasn’t very close to their office. When all the files were ready, this lady suddenly said that my passport was damaged and told me that she was going to stamp damaged passport to my file. I was like what??? I have never been told such a thing by any other visa offices, and I had received visas with the same passport just few months ago from other countries’ embassies. Their reasoning was that the ink found on the outer layer (cover) of the passport that was used to show my country’s name and flag was erased a bit due to overuse. This is most certainly not a reason to label it as damaged. All the pages inside were intact and no scratch existed inside the passport. I travel a lot so with friction it is inevitable and normal that outside ink gets erased. I genuinely hope one day that they get closed permanently. I literally developed ptsd from them.

Not sure why there are so many negative reviews for the service at this VFS centre. I was trying to book an appointment for my biometrics online, unfortunately no available date was showing up till May on their online portal. Hence I took a chance to just walk in at their office. Inspite of only entertaining people with appointments, the staff (especially Kevin Smith) was very helpful and showed me a way to book an appointment for the next day just to upload my documents, but they took me in only after waiting 20 minutes to submit my passport. I really appreciated that! They said the Visa will take 4 weeks, but I received mine in 19 days! I was pleasantly surprised and happy with their service. They only reason I would cut one star is that the value add services aren't really worth it. I was given a time window for when to pick up the passport and there was no flexibility regarding the same (I had to adjust that on a working day with only a few hours notice). As I was not comfortable using a courier service and paying for it, I didn't have much of a choice. Besides that, Overall the process is pretty straightforward and the people were very helpful at the centre, and I appreciate that they took me in and spend the time to look at my submission without having an appointment.

Be careful with Google map's location. Follow the secondary address, as the UK Immigration office is no longer located at 2 Bloor West, and is instead 10 minutes down the road at 208 Bloor West in an unsightly medical office building. If you don't check ahead of time, or you quickly type it in your phone GPS, you're going to have a bad time. Addendum: Keep an eye on your junk email folder - Google sorted several of their important time limited emails into said folder. Edit: So, all in all, not a bad time, most reviews considered. Worst parts were waiting a month to attend the first appointment available, and the lack of flexibility in picking up the passport once said and done. The appointment itself was quick and over in 30 minutes (half of which was arriving 15 minutes early), and the staff were all open to questions and friendly enough to answer. I was given a timeline of probably a month to a month and a half until being able to pick up my passport. In actuality, once my passport was shipped, it only took 13 days until it was in my hands again. Mileage will vary based on how long it takes to process your application at the actual visa centre. In my opinion, the main reasons it would never make a 4 or 5 star experience is the absolute lack of communication channels available (which most people seem to agree on), and the nickel and dime aspect of every single add-on. You should not have to pay $5 to receive emails and texts that don't actually give you much information, or $100 to take advantage of the elderly and/or others not as advanced in technology on how to upload 3 pdfs to the website. When your passport is available to pick up, you receive an email to contact that contacts the offices in Toronto, St. Johns, Bermuda, and Halifax. Obviously that artificially inflates the wait time as a single office should have their own contact info. So with that in mind, it takes a few days to hear back from the office. Once you do hear back, they automatically set an appointment for you which you have no say in - in my case, less than 24 hour notice to be at the office the next day during work hours. In comes the nickel and dime aspect again, as the email goes on to say "we would be glad to help ship the passport back to you via courier" if you cannot make the appointment. The courier that costs $45 to ship with, when passports are a smaller item than a mailed letter. Bit of a suspicious pricing point on that one. Otherwise, the job was done fine. Stressful experience as you do not know if you're approved until physically having the passport back in your hands again, but that's not rare for a bureaucratic experience. The office does what it needs to - a large bulk of these complaints seem to be on the approval aspect, which the centre makes pretty clear they have no hand in, and are just the middleman. Why does the process need a middleman when most every other country does the visa process entirely online nowadays? The world will never know.

The staff is really helpful and efficient. All the instructions are listed online and if you follow their checklist and prepare all the documents accordingly it’s a fast process. Anyhow the staff is really patient and guide people patiently and thoroughly. Arrive on time don’t be too early as they don’t have room to accommodate extra people.