Visa's are required when visiting many countries to inform them of when you are coming, how long you're going to be there and what you are doing. Most visa's have a time limit to expiration and our China visa's are 90 days as a tourist.
We all used a online service called "visahq.com". They review the application and then submit it to the consulate/embassy for processing then pick it up and send it back for you for a set fee.
We all submitted the exact same package. I sent mine to the San Francisco office, Georgia sent his to Houston and Colorado sent his to Washington DC. Mine flew through the system, received all my update texts and emails and was back in 6 days with no problems at all. Colorado sent his to DC and they initially said he needed hotel confirmation numbers with his name on each one. If you have traveled with a group before you will know that hotels are booked as a group and no "individual" confirmation numbers are given which if you look at our itinerary that is exactly what we have. I informed him to tell visahq to submit "as is" and it then flew through the system and was back in 7 days.
My Georgia cadet sent it to Houston and at 6 days they said it was complete and ready for pick up but did not get returned. Both of us have called visahq multiple times and have yet to receive a return phone call. When we did get an operator we were told it was ready for pick up but no one is available to go there. FINALLY we got another story yesterday that their office is understaffed and was finally process on July 3rd and submitted on the 7th and then the Chinese consulate has a backlog on visa's. Now at 14 days we are still waiting for his visa. Both Lt. Col. Scoggins (our IACE contact) and I are getting very nervous as we are a week away and short one visa. None of us are happy with visahq and hoping the last visa is picked up and overnighted on Monday. . . fingers crossed!
Major Deeds
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