South African High Commission

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Reviews

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  Price Ndlovu

  I've been trying to contact these folks for over a month without any success. They don't answer the phone, respond to emails, tweets or Facebook posts. Utterly useless. How can South African's get help if the Embassy isn't able to assist us?! Totally outrageous.

  24-05-2023
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  Debarati Banerjee

  IF YOU NEED VISA TO TRAVEL SOUTH AFRICA PLEASE READ THIS REVIEW AND THINK THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE YOU CONSIDER SA FOR TOURISM PURPOSE. Maybe there should be a rating option in negative. The worst service I have ever seen. I have applied for the eVisa for tourism on 4th May, 2023 from UK for my whole family. On the same day my friend and his family applied for the same eVisa. We both have provided similar documents. Now on 15th May they have rejected our Visa mentioning that the bank statement was not certified. The similar bank statement was accepted everywhere within the UK as well as for the Schengen Visa purpose. The South Africa embassy did not ask for further document. Surprisingly my friend’s family got the Visa on the same day with the similar bank statement (not certified). Then we got the letter from the bank confirming our statement was valid and then we appealed for the visa on top of the rejection on 15th May. So far no response. We have sent at least 10 emails so far requesting to update any status on our appeal. We also had copied all the DG contacts in the email those we have found in Google. No one just bothers to respond. It’s been a week now. Their provided helpline number does not exist. They don’t reply over the email. So we have no clue now. At this moment we cannot cancel our hotels as we will get no refund. Our flight from the UK is on 27th May and no response so far. So in few days we are about to lose close to £10K just for this non sense people. I would never recommend anyone to choose this country for holiday. You have no clue how they can spoil your plans and you may pay high penalty just for their worst service. If you need Visa to travel this country please read this review and think thousand times before you choose.

  23-05-2023
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  Larraine Eckert

  BE AWARE!!!! The South African Embassy London have outsourced their passports applications and renewals over to VFS Global. This is a very good thing, although expensive solution. VFS global is very efficient and no more long queues outside the London Embassy only to get turned away at 12pm. BUT please be aware that the SA london Embassy website says you need to pay for your passport by BACS at £58.00 per passport renewal before you go to the appointment at VFS Global. But infact you will land up paying £58 via bacs and then another £108ish at the VFS Global appointment as they only take the payment that way and they give you some doggy looking emails to try and claim your money back from the SA Embassy. Not sure how successful we will be. Another point is that they ask you to bring two copies of all your documents, when infact VFS only collect one set. The SA Embassy website also says to bring 4 passport photos, when infact you don’t need to bring photos as they take your photo at the appointment and they also fingerprint you. I hope this helps someone else from having the runaround. Take care.

  23-05-2023
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  Relte Stephen Schutte

  20-05-2023
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  Candice Rayne

  Extremely poor representation of South Africa. The staff working at this embassy have no customers care skills, they are rude, they don’t answer the phones or reply to emails. My application has been sitting for 9 months and hasn’t even been touched. Did I get a phone call (nope), did I have to keep trying for months to get through on the phone (yes) to find out it hasn’t even been looked at and the person was going to find out why and call me back. Did he call (nope). How do these people keep their jobs? Anywhere else and they would have been fired!! These are the kind of people that give SA a bad name. Lazy don’t care attitudes. Disgraceful.

  06-05-2023
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  夏侯惇

  Though South Africa partnered with VFS Global for their visa application, the processing time is ridiculously long and you don’t hear from them at all. For reference, Namibia can give you the visa on the same day of application. For a country that relies on tourism, it surely hates the tourists, hence the process for obtaining a visa is difficult. No wonder the economy is not doing well.

  06-05-2023
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  Dave Humbles

  27-04-2023
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  Luan Swanepoel

  The whole place is a joke and they love wasting your time. I asked for them to search if they had a record of my letter of retention (they did not, embarrassingly) and for some odd reason made me fill out an entire passport application form (??????????) for this simple request. Keep all your forms because they will not keep backups for you, in the 21st century amazing.

  27-04-2023
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  Alan Dobbs

  Sad to see the South African flag hanging on 1 rope while the British flags are proudly flying...ambassador should be fired

  27-04-2023
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  CHE MZANSI

  Lack of information and incompetence: When you apply either passport which is now done via Vfs global they will tell you one thing and when you finally have an appointment you get told you missing something else. South African embassy is useless and requires lots of patience to deal with them. As expats we seen as second class citizens. Nothing is straight forward, you get sent from pillar to post. They need to get their act together. I could be tempted to say vfs global is doing a great job but I can't. When I applies for my sons passport I decided to go to vfs global Manchester. Its was quick procedure however we were told he needed unabridged certificate which we had not brought. Second time we brought unabridged certificate to Vfs global in London only to be told that he needs an ID as he is now of age to sign for his passport. Why they couldn't Have told us this in the first place. So patience is required and make yourself stupid.

  27-04-2023