Chapter 11

Actually, it did save it. Woop!

Warning: this is going to be a complaining post. You have been warned.

Basically, what I wanted to complain about is the whole IEC visa application process for Canada's year long work holiday visa. From the beginning, you should know that you can get the Australian working holiday visa in 48 hours. You could book a flight to Sydney for two days time and by the time you get there, you'd be able to enter and work legally for a whole year in the country. With Canada it's a completely different story.

I'll give you my progress timeline:

On the 9th of January, I sent my application pack to the High Commission in London which contained three completed forms, passport photos, CV, a copy of my passport amongst other things. Ciaran sent his on the 11th.
On the 7th of February, nearly a month later, I get an email notifying me that they have received my application. At this point, they hadn't even looked at it before this date. In this email, they said that they'd email me again within two weeks to request payment of €105 and to email them an electronic version of one of the forms I'd already sent. Ciaran got this email on the 14th.
On the 29th of February, I received this email. The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that this was not within the promised two weeks. I sent my payment on the 1st of March and the form on the 2nd. I immediately got a reply saying they'd received my email. Ciaran got the payment requested email on the 6th.
On the 9th of March, I started to freak out. Ciaran got an email to say they'd received his payment and he has been moved on to the next stage. Seeing as he had paid a week after me (through the same bank branch and using the same method), I started to panic. I'd read enough horror stories on boards.ie of applications being sent back even though they'd paid where they had to start the whole drawn out process again. I emailed them right away but being 5 o'clock on a Friday evening, I didn't expect anything to be done. Luckily, I got the email that Ciaran got on the 12th.

So, it seems to be really unorganised. They don't seem to employ the first come first served process they promise on their website. They don't reply to emails. They seem to cancel people applications on a whim. They don't work as quick as they say they do on their website. People who applied last year, when it was organised by Paris, say the whole thing took them only six weeks.

This was all I had before it crashed and now I don't even feel like complaining anymore as this being saved here in cyberspace has put me in a good mood. But yeah, London office bad, getting visa soon good.

Now I've to think of another good video to end this.