I applied for my US visa a few days ago, but the process wasn’t as easy as I had expected. Some things went smoothly, but there were a few parts I really didn’t like. First of all, I had to deposit the visa fee. The good thing was that the US Embassy in India had arranged for the visa fee to be deposited at HDFC Bank branches in several cities. So, I just went to my local HDFC bank in Varanasi with my passport and deposited the fee, which was about Rs. 6,700. They told me I could use the receipt only after 24 hours, since it takes them that long to upload it into their system. Still, I thought it was convenient that I could handle this step locally.

After depositing the fee, I went to the US Embassy website to schedule my visa interview, but it redirected me to the VFS website. I had to fill out the DS-160 form, and that turned out to be a real struggle. The website kept disconnecting, and every time the connection failed, I had to start over. Even the website itself warned applicants to save every page before moving forward, which clearly meant they were aware of this problem. It took me two full days and at least 6–7 attempts before I finally managed to complete and submit the form online.

The most frustrating part came afterward, when I tried to book my visa interview appointment. For several days, I kept trying multiple times a day, but the website always showed the same message: “No date available for interview. Please try again after 24 hours.” After 4 or 5 days of this, I wrote to VFS about the issue, but their reply didn’t address my problem at all. It seemed more like a canned response they probably send to many applicants with different questions.

Finally, I decided to call VFS directly, and their answer really surprised me. They told me that their website only works properly around 8:00 in the morning, so I should try booking my appointment then. The next morning, I logged in at 8:00 AM, and sure enough, the system worked. I was able to successfully book my visa interview. It wasn’t a terrible experience overall, but I certainly didn’t expect something like this from US government services. Later, I explained the whole issue to one of my trip sponsors, and he suggested that I should write to the US Embassy in India to let them know about it. He was confident that the Embassy probably wasn’t aware of such a glitch. Still, whenever I think about this, it leaves me with a different impression of US government services than I had before.