Realistic processing times for SET(M) applications

[Edd Tillen]

Hi there,

This is my first time posting to this, or any other forum, so forgive me if I make any etiquette faux pas. I've read this forum a lot and found it really helpful for finding information for my wife's various visa applications since we were married. She is Peruvian.

We applied for her settlement visa earlier this year, originally in June, but a month later it was returned due to a banking error not letting the payment go out. This was my first big annoyance, all it would have taken was a phone call from them asking me to check with my bank and I could have had it sorted out in an hour. Instead we had to start the process again. So we applied again straight away in early July.

The urgency here is that we've been granted an interest free loan from a business start up charity, to start a travel agency. The application for this loan was in my wife's name, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But now they won't release the funds until she has her passport back as proof of ID. All the need is photo ID, a driving licence would have done, it's such a stupid little technicality. Anyway, the offer is time limited until October. And it really is a fantastic opportunity, it would be tragic if we missed out.

I never truly believed that it would actually take 6 months. I know what these government targets are all about, and they always put the worst case scenario as a target to improve their stats. I assumed that most applications could get done within a couple of months. Having read this forum though, and seeing a few poor people having to wait 8 months+, I'm beginning to get very concerned that my wife won't receive her visa back in time.

I have called the Home Office, and been given an address to write to, which I wrote to a month ago, with no response. I called again and have been given the fax number, 0151 213 1481, which I can't seem to get a response out of either. But it's not like a family member is dying or anything, so I don't expect them to have too much sympathy over the situation. They'll probably say we should have thought about this before we applied, and should have gone for the one-day option. Which is probably true, but that doesn't help us now.

So, what I'm asking the good people of the forum is, do you know what the realistic time for processing is? Are there any good news stories of people having their SET(M) applications turned around reasonably quickly? And if not, what other options do we have? Is there any other way to contact the office? Do you think they'd return the application and let us go down the one-day route? Would we be able to get a refund in this situation (probably wishful thinking but if we went down this route, the whole thing would cost us nearly £2500, which isn't far off what the loan is anyway, that is a lot of money for us).

Thanks very much for any help or advice in this situation.

PS What I really don't understand is, how come it takes 6 months to process, but if you pay an extra £300 suddenly it only takes a day. That smells like a bit of a con to me.

[sab124]

you can see from the below post that timeline for their SET(M) case was 10 weeks.....

http://www.immigrationboards.com/viewto ... start=1300

but really every case is different

[Edd Tillen]

Thanks Sab124. I checked that thread and there did seem to be a lot of 10 weeks, which gave me a lot of hope.

But then, today, weirdly enough, the passport arrived. So not including the first month we lost when the payment didn't go through, that's taken just less than 2 months. Which is not bad at all.

I just wish the home office could be a bit more accurate with their predictions to stop all this worry.