Last year, in April, my wife as she is now and I, paid a visit to the UK embassy in Manila. We went there fairly blind and hadn't even joined the forum by then. The Manila embassy is a highly secure site as you might imagine and after explaining the requirements for a CNI, we were quickly diverted away to VFS in Makati, where we were able to start to piece together information that we needed for marriage and a Spouse visa.
Generally, it would seem that although the UKBA makes the rules etc the day to day side of things, dealing with visa applicants queries, is largely dealt with by VFS. In the end it was only for the local CNI requirement that the embassy actually dealt with us directly (processing of the visa application excepting of course). In your case, going for a Fiancee visa, your fiancee wont even require a local CNI issued by the UKBA.
It was interesting making the initial visit nonetheless, but in some ways a wasted journey (CNI related stuff excepting).
Regarding the visa, any time I managed to get through to the UKBA they almost without exception referred me / us to VFS.
The embassy does reply to email but often after great delay ( I found often at least a week ). But found VFS much quicker to respond. Some say that VFS cant and don't really know enough to advise on visa matters, as they are merely there to take in new visa applications, but at the end of the day I found them both very helpful and accessible.
If paying them a visit to find out information / ask visa related questions, I think it helps to make an appointment with VFS but on the 2 occasions we visited (once in April and once in June) we just turned up on spec for 1pm. I think we arrived at about 11 am and got told to return at 1pm. Once inside they see you on a first come first served basis.
The only problem we had was not of VFS's making and that was simply that I wasn't allowed into the building complex with shorts on
Originally Posted by lastlid
Last year, in April, my wife as she is now and I, paid a visit to the UK embassy in Manila. We went there fairly blind and hadn't even joined the forum by then. The Manila embassy is a highly secure site as you might imagine and after explaining the requirements for a CNI, we were quickly diverted away to VFS in Makati, where we were able to start to piece together information that we needed for marriage and a Spouse visa.
