Pippin said:
First AOR Tuesday, 1 February 2011.
Doc Manu: possibly waiting a bit longer for the AOR seems to be the only downside to waiting if you have not yet put together your documents.
Regarding 33 weeks: the mention of taking TWO PLUS MONTHS TO return documents to applicants "by ship" suddenly made me think they COULD be stockpiling the eligible applications to send to each VO in a large batch "by ship" which would account for a chunk of those 33 weeks. Surely, they CAN'T be waiting for all NOCs to fill (or perhaps they thought they would have filled at a faster rate than they have). My nickel (2 cents + HST)
If they are stockpiling applications to bulk send to VO, it is still incredibly unfair to wait THAT long before letting applicants know if they have passed the eligiblity review or not. Their customer service, judging by my experience and others I am now reading about, is amongst the poorest I have ever witnessed.
I know we are asking to enter their country, but they are asking the world for skilled and educated people to fill gaps in their system. As I have always said, it is a 2 way process.
If they really must wait for 33 weeks to bulk send to VO, then at LEAST inform applicants as soon as feasible if their eligiblity review is successful. How much would it hurt to send out an email "You have passed your eligibilty review, we expect your application to be forwarded to visa office in April 2011"?
Any other company on the planet that a customer has paid $700 to $2000 to plus several months application document gathering would not get away with the complete SILENCE that CIC are showing their customers, and by the look of it are going to continue to show.
Sorry, didn't mean to start a rant, it just turned out that way!
Wayne.