Sorry to hear about your spouse visa refusal.
I also had my wife'e spouse visa refused earlier this year but was lucky and we used the good advice from many people on this site to submit more information as part of an appeal and within 3 weeks of lodging the appeal the refusal was over turned and we were granted a Visa.
Part of our refusal included my wife being unemployed since I met her. Our relationship was shorter than yours and we managed to show that we agreed jointly for my wife not to seek work as it allowed us more time to communicate and also allowed her bonding time with her family.
Under the Human Rights section I was able to give reasons why I could not join my wife full time in the Phillipines so they were contravening my Human Rights as a married man.
One difference was that my wife had an interview and that is when the issued refusal.
I also tried to contact the ECO and ECM during a visit to Manila before submitting our appeal and was not able to get an appointment over a period of almost 5 weeks trying to arrange a meeting during my stay in Manila.
No point going to the embassy as they refuse you access to the visa section without an appointment. You can see a consular without appointment but they can not discuss visa cases with you.
The appeal needs to be placed within 28 days unless you write them requesting longer to lodge appeal. If you lodge appeal in the phillipines it can take 60 working days for the ECO/ECM to review before either over turning decision or passing to AIT in UK. whole process can take 6 months or longer. we were lucky on short appeal and over turn at 1st step. The more evidence you can supply and letters of support the better.
Appealing direct to AIT is no quicker as they require time to get documents and case file from the embassy where the application was placed.
Nobody can really advise on whether to appeal or re-apply as they do not know how strong your appeal reasons are but it sounds like you have good reason to appeal.
If you decide to appeal we hope you have quick and positive outcome.
Not sure if it helped but we tried to get our MP involved and also stated press involvement about our treatment.
Good luck with whatever you decide and we are sure it is only a matter of time before your wife is with you in the UK.
