Originally posted by Pauldo@Sep 4 2005, 08:33 PM
I'm pretty sure I read today on the embassy puzzle page that settlement visas have to be done in person, not by courier.
It's both. You need to ring the courier to collect the visa, and pay them for the privilege (even if, like us, you lived a stone's throw from the Embassy in Makati), and then they get in touch and tell you when to go for your interview.

So you still get the fun of queuing outside in the heat, only now, you've paid the courier a day's philippine wages just to collect your package from you as well.

Or something like that - it keeps changing and may have changed again - for a while they experimented on giving straightforward settlement visas out with NO interview!! Can you imagine how good those golden days must have been?

Another possibility they may be doing now is no longer having the courier pick up your stuff for a settlement visa, but you still need to ring their expensive rip off premium rate number which only about 3 phone lines in the Philippines are able to connect to (woe betide you if you don't have pldt, they make it as hard as possible for you right from the first phone call), i order to book an interview date.