Purchasing a Visa at Home - More Difficult than Abroad?

The process of obtaining a visa is relatively easy for many travelers to most countries.  Depending on your nationality, many destinations do not even require such added documentation of entry, or at the very least, offer visa on arrival which can be purchased at all airports.  Then there are the few hold outs, the few countries that do not offer visa on arrival services leaving you to obtain a visa at a consulate located on foreign soil. Such countries include Brazil, China, Vietnam, and India - all of which are on my travel list.  Of course, getting a visa at home (specifically in the USA) for an international destination sounds easy enough upon a first glance but could is really anything but for some countries.


Most consulate websites state that the procedure is as simple as filling out a form and dropping off your passport at the nearest consulate for processing.  But what if you do not live year a consulate that are typically located only in major metropolitan areas such as L.A, Houston, Chicago, or Washington DC?  Well, one option is to use mail back service with a prepaid return envelope.  This is good for obtaining entry visas to countries like Vietnam, however some, like China, have in recent years removed this as a valid option.  Without a local friend to act as a courier on your behalf, there is only one valid option - paid internet services.

A paid internet visa service is like having a friend in a consulate city that obtains a visa on your behalf that you have to buy a steak dinner for afterward. While seeking a multiple entry visa to China, I had to use one of these services in order to get my visa processed.  For others out there like myself, there are a few things that should be kept in mind regarding using one of these services.

Better Business Bureau is Your Friend

A simple Google search will bring up hundreds of poorly designed websites that offer such services for simple visa fees.  There are well established sites like World Nomads which offer visa services but have an outrageous price of up to $60 per application to match. Unfortunately most of the cheaper sites do not stand up to the Better Business Bureaus basic search.  Whether bad history or no history is worse is up to you, but I tend to err on the side of caution - especially when giving away my passport less than 60 days before departing for a major international trip. Over an hour of scouring the internet and comparing to the BBB database, only one site for obtaining a visa came back as a registered business:  MyChinaDocs.com.  While no complaints, registration with the BBB is an encouraging sign and adds a layer of trust with such an important document.  With this encouraging level of security, and correspondence with Cindy over at the company, I sent my passport off for visa acquisition.

Fees, Fees, Fees!  So Many More Fees!

The one downside to using a visa service is the added fees associated with them.  In addition to the $140 visa fee to China (yes, $140, the price went up in early June as a result of price increases of US visas for Chinese residents), there are many other fees that have to be kept in mind with regards to using visa services.  As was stated in the prior section, many sites offer a processing fee up to $60 per application.  The site I utilized charged $35 per visa, which was around the average for most websites I looked through.  The secondary fees are regarding shipping and return services which are required to be prepaid in advance.  Even worse, more websites request that shipping be done via UPS or Fed Ex with tracking in order to ensure that the document is monitored at all times.  I agree with this process, but the cost goes up significantly.  The service I used was located in Houston, much further away than other consulates, but I was willing to pay the greater shipping fees (about $35 total) in order to ensure that someone does not make off with my precious, precious passport.  What was once a $140 application fee turned into over $210 just to be even allowed entry into the country of China.  Exorbitant, but necessary.

Professional and Swift

Putting the expensive nature of the process aside, obtaining a visa through a 3rd party company was one of the smoothest transactions to date while planning my RTW trip - even if the planning phase of the process was quite substantial.  I was kept up to date by email with the representative from the company who gave me accurate time tables of when my passport would be returned from the consulate and shipped out.  The five day turn around period listed on the consulates website was accurate and I was in possession of my favorite travel item slightly more than 7 business days after shipping it out.  Overall a pleasant and smooth experience - something I am still bitter about when purchasing my Japan Rail Pass a few weeks ago.

Posted in: China,Commitment,Planning,Visas