We recently needed to get a travel visa to France for my wife, who is Chinese.  It wasn’t easy.   The visa requests need to go through the French consulate office in NYC.   But clicking over to their web site leads you to an appointment calendar that resolutely rejects any attempt to click on a possible day or time.   It’s not possible to get them on the phone, or to saunter into the consulate for some help.  However, they did eventually respond to emails, with form letter emails that revealed some of the mysteries of how to work their system.

One email indicated that we should try to check the web site daily, preferably between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m., and again between 5:45 p.m. and 6 p.m. This didn’t work too well.  A second email provided what seems to be the key: “If not lucky to get a slot, continue checking daily and particularly Monday mornings at 8.30 am (NY time) as new slots are added at that precise moment.”   Luckily that worked for us.

In the first week of frequent clicking, we almost panicked and retained a private visa expediter.  Our trip is coming up in late June, and while that’s not tomorrow, the one time we did click into an appointment before we found the Monday Morning Solution, the appointment was already in mid-July.  An expediter was going to charge $450 (what’s up with that?). Glad we persisted.

NYC French visa link: https://france-visas.gouv.fr