Eighteen Days For Schengen Visa Applicants To Confirm Or Cancel Appointments

The “TLS Contact” Center working for the French Embassy in Algiers has introduced new procedures requiring the confirmation or cancellation of appointments by Schengen visa applicants by e-mail 18 days prior to the date specified by the center.

“TLS Contact” in the cities of Oran and Annaba, has launched to this effect new SMS procedures for those who have already received a date for filing their Visa file, inviting them to see their e-mail within a period of time that is 18 days before the deadline, where they must go through the email message and enter the required data, notably the file number and their e-mail address. 

Then, the latter have to choose between confirming or canceling the same date and using another date, in line with the available options proposed by “TLS Contact” .

In the event of failure to respond and interact with the e-mail within 72 hours of its sending, the appointment is automatically canceled and the owner of the file is prevented as a result from accessing the headquarters of TLS Contact.

As a recall, emergency measures have been taken of late by the French Embassy in Algiers to allow people to make an appointment for a visa application within 15 days, said in Algiers the Ambassador of France, his Excellency Mr. Xavier Driencourt. 

Speaking recently at a press briefing at the embassy headquarters, Mr. Driencourt said that the appointments proposed by TLS-contact were all booked by visa applicants until 31 January 2018, which represents “nearly 130,000 blocked appointments, a significant portion of which has certainly been reserved by indelicate and profit-grabbing intermediaries”.

 “In view of this untoward situation, emergency measures have been taken since September 17, 2017, as several hundred daily slots have been opened to the large public to make an appointment within 15 days”, explained the Ambassador, emphasizing that “this system will be sustainable and additional slots will be opened each week to allow other visa applicants to make an appointment”. 

According to the ambassador, nearly 30,000 additional appointments can be granted by the end of the year, with a return to normal starting as from January 2018. 

Explaining the disruption in making appointments with TLS-contact, the Ambassador blamed this situation on “unscrupulous go-betweens who book appointments with TLS-contact to draw an undue financial benefit from the visa applicants”, as he put it.