u/Adorable-Thing2551

Hi US Visa Scheduling,

I am recently using this website due to my partner's case being ready for an in-person interview at the US consulate in Guangzhou, China. However, like many of you, we are unable to do this due to the website crashing very frequently.

As many of you are also aware, contacting their customer support is pretty bad and the last time I emailed them, the advice I was given was "check three times a day and pray you see something" and there was an acknowledgement of the website breaking for people. I searched online for a US number to contact US Travel Docs (the parent application to US Visa Scheduling) and gave them a call to explain my issue and ask for some help in at least checking my partner's consulate.

According to the phone representative:

1. This is a known, on-going issue.

2. Many users are unable to access the web portal (Cloudflare redirects, stuck in the waiting room, unable to see slots for appointments) and this is not isolated to specific consulates.

3. The root cause of the on-going issue is a recent system upgrade. What this affected was not specified but it is what is causing all these crashes.

This is a recent issue and it should subside once the issue is resolved. They are working on it actively and they hope to get it fixed before the weekend (because they will have less staff over the weekend) but there are no guarantees.

We are all advised to continue to monitor the page daily and if you want to check multiple times a day, go ahead. However, if you experience issues, it's an on-going issue and it may be on-going into next week.

Stay tuned...

I've spent somewhere around 3 hours over the past two days trying to schedule an interview for my fiancee (Guangzhou, China) but for the 5 / 38 times I've tried opening the site, I get no available dates of any kind to select when scheduling a date.

I also paid last night as it requires me to do this before scheduling a date.

Does the site have specific days it is under less maintenance like Mondays? Today it's Sunday so I'm not sure if that is why the site is so slow and crashing frequently.

Hello. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I did search through the subreddit and did a general Google search too before making this post as I did not feel the answers were satisfactory.

My fiancee is from China and she will be attending the US consulate in Guangzhou. She has just submitted the DS-160 application and will need to schedule her medical appointment before the consulate visa.

I have her application number that she saved.

I found online some places recommending 'USTravelDocs' which is a commercial website (ends in .com) but is allegedly an approved website by the US government.

When I go to USTravelDocs and select that I am applying for a K1 visa, I get the following message:

"Note: Do not schedule your interview date or pay the required fee until after you receive these instructions."

Given that we just submitted the DS-160 about an hour ago and given the message above, we should probably not pay the fee until we get some instructions.

I want to verify with others though the following:

1. Will she get a letter in the mail that gives these instructions? Will this physical mail have a number we need to pay the form fee?

2. Does this also cover paying the medical fee or that is still billed separately? I don't want her to get a surprise charge.

3. When is a reasonable time to pay the DS-160 after electronically filing it?

4. Is USTravelDocs the legitimate place to pay or is there a .gov resource to pay DS-160 fees?