Australian High Commission in Pretoria

🕗 opening times

comments 5

• en

  Simon Welsh

  :: 25 January 2018 10:39:15

  When applying for visas, the Australian high commission forces you to use their appointed agent, TLScontact/Teleperformance. This agent does not provide any indication of visa processing times, whether by email, phone or on their website. Once you have lodged your visa application it is impossible to obtain any feedback from the agent or from the high commission. The standard response is ‘we are still within published global processing times and are thus unable to respond’. There is a complete lack of willingness to assist in any way whatsoever, and I presume they would rather we did not try to visit Australia. My wife’s brother and family are all citizens of Australia, but to try and visit them for Christmas was our worst travel nightmare on record. On our planned day of departure we had to cancel all of our tickets and 3 weeks of accommodation as we did not obtain the visas in time. 3 days later, the visas were issued, and I had to rebook the entire trip at peak period rates (for our family of 4). We are frequent travellers, we had visited Australia 4 years previously, we even still had 2-year Schengen visas in all of our passports, none of which helps. I have lodged multiple complaints, but to date no acknowledgement whatsoever of any problems on their side, let alone any type of apology.

• en

  B Branson

  :: 06 November 2017 15:53:28

  Bloody awful service. Bad attitude. Lazy. Not interested in actually working. Appear to be marking time. Needs a makeover starting from the top.

• 

  Elizabeth Nomor

  :: 28 September 2017 03:32:31

  My heart is breaking inside as I write! Are these people for real???!! Are they Australian or the typical "African" styled workers I ran away from my country because of??! This is like the worst customer relations I have encountered since leaving Nigeria!!!! Applied for a visiting visa for my parents and can't believe all I have experienced is really happening!! Am so sad!

• 

  Ishmael Rupanga

  :: 28 December 2016 23:35:46

  Worst embassy ever. I've never seen such a hopeless immigration service. I applied for a visitors visa for my parents to come for Xmas and 2 months later still no response and Xmas has gone. Updates on account show nothing. This is unheard off considering they have been to Australia before you would think they have all the info in the system. Honestly looking at a 8 paged form and making a few phone calls you would expect them to push volumes of applications a day. Better to be declined in a day than to wait for months to get a rejection.

• 

  DotFusion

  :: 23 December 2016 11:31:24

  I really wonder how much work if ANY is actually done at any Australian embassy worldwide?! I have had many visas for Australia and just about every other country I need one for and Australia is by far the worst when it comes to processing times and cost. I am waiting more than a month now for a visitor visa and now Christmas holidays are upon us which means I will not be able to travel and spend the holidays with my wife and family as planned in Australia. Thanks for once again treating me like some kind of criminal Australia! Unlike fairer countries who evaluate applications based on individual circumstances, which in my case, I have been in and out of their country at least 20 times in the last 10 years, they instead just treat everyone like a criminal trying to break the law! I have also been to at least 50+ countries in the last 10 years and that seems to count for nothing either. Thanks for nothing.