Hi everyone I would like to share our recent experience with the Austrian Embassy New Delhi for our first Schengen Tourist Visa application.
My wife and I are both working professionals with good travel history (Japan, Georgia, Singapore, Oman, Vietnam and Thailand).
16/03 - Submitted application at VFS Bangalore
18/03 - Received confirmation that application has reached embassy
25/03 - My employer's HR department mentioned that embassy reached out to them for employment verification and that they have replied
10/04 - VFS Notification that processed application is dispatched via courier
11/04 - Received the package with rejection letter inside. The only reason mentioned as "Employer did not respond to employment verification email" - We were totally confused at this point as my employer had confirmed that they did reply. Contacted the HR department for confirmation on the response. They replied back with a copy of the email they sent to embassy
Drafted an appeal letter addressing the issue and mentioned that the employer did reply but the embassy might not have received it due to some technical or communication issue. I also mentioned that the employer is aware of the issue and is willing to provide the confirmation again. Attached a copy of the email provided by HR and mentioned both our offical email IDs in the letter (this was not shared earlier).
Just to be on the safer side I also attached our salary slips and bank statements for six months (instead of 3 months which was already shared at the time of application). All files including the signed appeal letter were merged into a single PDF file and attached to the email sent to the embassy's email IDs.
15/04 - Embassy re-sent the employment verification email to HR tagging me in the email
16/04 - HR Department replied to the embassy. But due to the firm's internal policy they sent the reply in encrypted format. To view the email you have to login to a portal with an OTP sent to your email ID. I guess this is why the embassy missed the first reply. I forwarded the email to the embassy mentioning that it's an encrypted email and the steps they have to follow to open it.
17/04 - Embassy sent us an email asking us to resubmit our passports at the nearest VFS Application Center (yay!!).
Submitted passports on the same day. We opted to collect the passports back from the center so no fee was levied
21/04 - Passports received at embassy
23/04 - Passports dispatched from embassy to VFS
24/04 - Confirmation that passports reached VFS Bangalore
27/04 - Collected the passports with the visa sticker
Huge thanks to the various OPs on this sub who had shared their appeal journey with the Austrian Embassy here. It helped us a lot.
I know that in our case the confusion might have been due to the encrypted email but I saw a few other comments with similar rejection reasons mentioned, so thought I would share this to give hope that an appeal is possible even after rejection.
Happy to answer any questions.